Seagate External - Lovely, BUT!!!...

[danrow_99]

A few months ago I bought a USB 320GB drive to augment my laptop.
The drive was pre-formatted so I just plugged it in and off I went. Performance is great, and it's been totally reliable so I was well-chuffed. Sadly, it wasn't until I had about 120GB on it that I tried to put a 5GB file there. It was only then that I realised that it had been formatted as fat32 (i.e. no single files over 4GB)!
What the Hell are Seagate playing at? If they are trying to be helpful by pre-formatting drives then why use such an archaic format? Surely there should at least be a very prominent warning on the packaging. Maybe they have an interest in Partition Magic, that's the only way I can see to rectify things without spending a day loading and unloading my DVD writer!
Thank God Seagate don't sell cars, it's pretty hard to get hold of 4 star leaded petrol these days....



Can anyone suggest a logical reason for Seagate choosing to use this format?
Is anyone else as annoyed as I am?

I'm kicking myself for not checking the file format before I started to use the drive, and I know some of you will be of the opinion that it's not Seagate to blame. If that's you, then of course, please feel free to keep your opinions to yourself (I already annoyed with myself quite enough thank you!).....

 

[danrow_99]

So what you have done is made a thread and already discounted any objective argument. Great.

Woah there cowboy! Caaaaaaaaalm down!

As a stranger I would no more expect you to keep your opinions to yourself on my say-so than you should expect a stranger to do so on yours!


Evidently my brusque approach has been misinterpreted and therefore requires some justification...

I didn't intend any offence. In the hope of provoking a spirited counterpoint I admit I expressed my opinion in a somewhat pugnacious manner. I do not apologise for that however, as I believe that the aggressive expression of opinions has always been, and always will be, the life-blood of all civilised debate and fora.
Just think how dull this forum would be if no-one ever expressed a strongly-worded opinion, or if no-one was ever deliberately bellicose in response.
My sign-off was a (almost completely) frivolous adjunct to my post, and certainly not meant to be taken seriously. The post as a whole was primarily designed to fecund an entertaining and perhaps illucidatory exchange of views on the issue raised, which I believe most members of this forum would relish.

I thought it was pretty obvious from the context that I wasn't serious about not welcoming any criticism. Surely you realise that just because someone tells you to do (or not do) something it doesn't mean you have to do (or not do) it! That excuse didn't work at Neuremberg 60 years ago and it's not going to wash now....

 

[danrow_99]

Thx for your helpful post and praise of some poster's intelligence lvls. I was reading the dictionary and discovered this new word, "hypocrite"; not got round to reading the definition yet.

In the danrow_99 dictionary the (recently updated) definition of the word 'hypocrite' now reads - A generally great guy who is probably very intelligent and reasonable and shares a name in common with a popular image-editing software package. esp. one who kindly defends those who post perfectly valid requests for advice and are then unjustly persecuted in the responses of those who haven't bothered to read the original question...

Thanks to all for the advice, I didn't realise that I could convert to NTFS without deleting all the data, I'll give it a go (deep breath!)...

 

[danrow_99]

Eh?!
Its very puzzling indeed that u choose to quote me, I was not one of those who belittled u; I just pointed out that someone sticking up for u was hypocrytical. Since he was then flaming himself. Oh and in my original post I corrected someone for not reading your post saving u the trouble of saying it.

So all in all, Im very puzzled why u have picked out one of my posts, none of which didnt ridicule u in a thread generally were saying u should have been aware from the start which format it was in.

Perhaps take your own advice next time and read the thread from the start, second thoughts it might not help in your case!

Hold on, I was actually being nice about you, sorry if it came accross differently. Sorry for any offence, and thanks for sticking up for me!

 

[danrow_99]

i HAVE to use fat32 on my external drive for it to work with my ps3. they only do it for compatibility as said. live and learn

I just wish they'd had a big warning on the box/install guide, I'm sure that a very significant proportion of their customers would require the capability to handle files over 4 gigs. I can't be the only one that formatting as NTFS wouldn't occur to!

Thanks for the help anyway everyone (those who were actually helpful at least).