A large file is not copied to an external drive. What to do if files from your computer are not copied to a flash drive

When writing some files to an external hard drive (flash drive, memory card), an error suddenly appears. But everything is correct, the disk opens in Explorer, other files are copied and deleted, but one file is not written even if you crack it! Even formatting doesn't help.

Look at the file size, I'm sure it will be more than 4GB. And if such a file is not copied to an external drive, then it needs to be reformatted, but to the NTFS file system.

Formatting to NTFS

Right-click on the disk and select “Format…”

IMPORTANT: The file system should be NTFS, that's the whole point. Leave the “Quick (cleaning table of contents)” checkbox. "Volume label" - any. Click “Start” and wait for the process to complete.

WHEN FORMATING ALL DATA ON THIS DISK WILL BE DESTROYED! So if there are any, copy them to another location first.

Now you can record any files. The whole point was that your USB drive was formatted in the FAT32 system, where the maximum size of one file is only 4GB. Please note that not all external devices understand the NTFS format.

The error “The file is too large for the target system” appears when recording a movie, game, or other large documents.

In this case, the volume of the flash drive itself can be 8 or 16 GB (and higher). What nonsense, right? How to write large files to a flash drive in such a case? And what exactly is the problem?

It's simple. The reason for the error is this: by default, a USB flash drive purchased in a store has the FAT32 file system. All you need to know about it is that it does not support the ability to write files larger than 4 GB. This is why large files are not copied to a flash drive. And it doesn’t matter: it’s a movie, a game, a Windows image, or something else.

There are 2 ways to write a large file to a flash drive. The first one is without data loss, the second one is with full formatting. Let's start with the first one, because this option is more convenient.

How to transfer a large file to a flash drive without losing data?

So, if you need to copy large files to a flash drive while saving all the data, do the following:

Ready. You can look at the properties of the USB drive - now NTFS will be written next to the “File system” item.

However, the data remained in place. Now you can easily write a file larger than 4 GB to a flash drive.

It is possible that when performing this operation you will receive the error “This disk is marked as dirty.”

What to do? Format the USB flash drive in the standard way, after saving the necessary documents.

Writing large files to a flash drive with formatting

I remind you again: this method will delete all information. Therefore, copy it to another PC, laptop, disk, upload it somewhere on the Internet, etc.

After this do the following:

Ready. After 30-60 seconds, the USB flash drive will be formatted.

Congratulations: you will no longer see the “File is too large for the target file system” error. At least until you buy a new USB drive.

Hello dear visitors. Yesterday they asked me a question: what should I do? I can’t transfer a large file to a flash drive? The system says that there is not enough disk space, but there is enough space on the flash drive. It was necessary to copy a movie of about 9 GB in size to a 16 GB flash drive. If you think logically, then everything should fit, but the system refused to put such a large file on a flash drive and that’s it.

I knew what was going on, and while I was explaining what needed to be done, a bright thought appeared in my head that I should write about this on a blog, so I’m actually writing it :). Let's first explain why large files, or to be precise, files larger than 4 GB do not want to be written to the flash drive and a message appears that there is not enough disk space.

The fact is that when you buy a flash drive, it is already formatted in the file system FAT32, and the file system is FAT32 does not support files larger than 4 GB. Here's the thing, it's very simple. We need to change the file system of the flash drive from FAT32 to NTFS. Because the NTFS file system supports, if I'm not mistaken, files up to 16 GB.

This question is becoming more and more relevant every day, because the size of memory on flash drives is growing and they are becoming cheaper every day. You can already buy a 16 GB flash drive for the same money that a year ago you could only buy a 4 GB one.

We just need to change the file system of our flash drive from FAT32 to NTFS. I will now write two ways in which you can do this.

Format the flash drive to the NTFS file system

I have already written about how. But I think it wouldn’t hurt to repeat it again and pay special attention to the fact that we are formatting it into an NTFS system.

Attention! Formatting a flash drive will destroy all information on it. Make sure that your flash drive does not contain the files you need. If there are, then copy them to your computer.

We connect the flash drive to the computer, wait until the computer recognizes it, go to "My computer" and right-click on our flash drive, select "Format".

A window will open in which we need to select the NTFS file system, select and click “Start”. We agree to the system warning.

After the formatting process is completed, you will receive a blank flash drive with the NTFS file system, onto which you can copy large files.

Converting a flash drive to NTFS for writing large files

The second method is to simply convert the flash drive to NTFS, this method essentially differs from the first, only in that the files you have on the flash drive will not be lost. But I still advise you not to risk it and copy the necessary files to your computer.

Our flash drive is connected and recognized by the computer. We go to “Start”, "All programs", “Standard” and select “Run”. Or just press Win+R. A window will open in which we write the command cmd and click “Ok”.

A window will open in which we need to enter a command to convert the flash drive to NTFS:

convert k : /fs:ntfs /nosecurity /x

Where k is the letter that the computer assigned to your flash drive, go to "My computer" and see what letter you have. Enter this command and press “Enter”.

Once completed, a report will appear:

How to transfer a large file to a flash drive? Converting a flash drive to the NTFS file system. updated: December 27, 2012 by: admin

Greetings, dear users! In my previous articles, I have already written articles on the topic of USB storage media, namely, what needs to be done if, or another example, and important data for us remains on it, what to do in such a situation in order to recover data from a flash drive .

If you really don’t know what to do in such situations, then I recommend that you read these articles. Since I started today’s article by talking about flash media, today we will learn another useful point directly related to the flash drives themselves.

Imagine that you decided to write an image of some program or toy onto your flash drive (by the way, I already wrote an article about what an image is, you can read more). Let's imagine that the volume of your flash drive is 16 GB, and your flash drive is completely empty and formatted. In turn, the volume of the recorded image is about 6 GB. At the moment when you try to write an image to a USB drive, a notification of the following nature “Not enough disk space” appears. Agree that the appearance of a notification of this kind puts you in a kind of dead end situation, because the flash drive itself is completely empty and has 16 GB of free space.

And if we simply copy a file whose size is less than 4 GB to a USB drive, then in this case the file itself is successfully placed on the flash drive and no errors associated with a lack of free space arise. The question arises, ?

At one time, I also had to deal with a similar phenomenon when a file with a volume of 5.7 GB was not written to a removable disk, while another file whose volume was approximately 4.3 GB was written to a flash drive without any problems. So what exactly is the problem then, you ask?

In this article, we will try to understand why files larger than 4-5 GB may not be written to your flash drive. Do you know why such large files are not written to flash media? In general, more and more often, many users who encounter this problem are asking the following questions: how to write a file larger than 4 GB to a flash drive. Regarding the current issue, I can tell you that I have heard different answers, or rather arguments, reasoning from users who have not encountered a similar phenomenon before.

For example, on one of the forums, a user suggested the following answer options: files are not written to the flash drive because there is a virus there, which takes up the entire free disk space of the flash drive, or the flash drive is damaged or burned out.
I will tell you that in such a situation, when large files (more than 4-5 GB) are not written to the flash drive, this does not mean at all that it is damaged, or that there is some kind of virus or malware on it. And the reason for this is the fact that the flash drive has a FAT32 file system.
By the way, I recommend that you also read my article:

From here you should remember once and for all that this file system is not capable of supporting large volumes of files (more than 4-5 GB) for work.

Therefore, if you want files larger than 4 GB to be successfully copied to a USB drive and then used by you for a specific purpose, then in this case you first of all need a flash drive with the NTFS file system. In general, they say that the NTFS file system has the ability to contact such files, the volume of which can reach up to 16TB. From all of the above it follows that in order to To write a file larger than 4 GB to a flash drive, you will need a flash drive with the NTFS file system. There is no need to specifically run to the first computer store you come across to purchase such a flash drive.

I suggest you move on to the practical part of this article to clearly see how to independently convert the file system of your flash drive. So, I hope it is now clear to you that we will need to perform a number of necessary steps to create a flash drive with the NTFS file system.

In this article we will look at several options that will allow you to convert the file system. Therefore, if you have difficulties copying large files, then this article will help you solve your problem.

First option:

So, after you have connected the flash drive to your computer, and the latter has successfully identified and recognized the USB drive, you will now need to go to the properties of the removable device.

To do this, open “My Computer” and right-click on the removable device.

From the context menu that appears, select Format. As a result, a special window will open in which you will need to click on the drop-down menu in the “File system” line and select NTFS.

Please note that if you have documents on your removable media, you will need to copy them to your computer.

Then all you have to do is click on the “Start” button. After a short time, the removable media will be formatted, after which the removable media will have the NTFS file system. However, one caveat should be noted here. If your computer still uses the Windows XP operating system, then in this case you will not be able to immediately format the flash drive in the NTFS file system.

In such a situation, you will need to open the “Device Manager” and select the value of removable storage, and then, as shown in the figure below, you just have to go to the “Policies” tab to activate the corresponding option.

Finally, you should open the properties of the flash drive again and format it.

After the flash drive is formatted, do not forget to set the parameter value in the “Policy” tab to its original value.

Second Option:

The second option involves changing the file system of a removable device using the “Convert” operation.

To begin, you will need to launch the command line by clicking on the “Start” button and typing “cmd” in the search bar and then pressing “Enter.”

Now in the window that opens, you should specify a special command, which will convert the file system of your flash drive. The command looks like this:

Then just press “Enter”. However, you should know that before converting a removable device, you will need to copy all the data to the hard drive, because you risk losing it.

I also draw your attention to the fact that you need to carefully enter the command and indicate the correct letter of your removable device. Otherwise, the conversion operation will not be completed and an error will appear indicating that the flash drive label is invalid.

At the end of this article, I would like to add that in addition to the above methods, they also resort to using various programs that also do a good job of changing the file system of a removable drive. However, if there are options for changing the file system that do not require installing software, then it is best to use these simple options, thereby not burdening your computer with the installation of unnecessary software.

For today, that’s all I wanted to tell you about today in terms of transferring data via removable devices. Have you ever seen errors of this kind when copying a large file and wondered how to write a file larger than 4 GB to a flash drive? I hope today's article was useful to you. See you all in the next article, dear readers!

P.S Finally, I suggest watching a video clip of a meteorite falling on Chelyabinsk!

Some users are still faced with the problem of handling files larger than 4 GB.

As a rule, this happens more and more often when downloading files from or somewhere else (because we rarely move files of this size, which means people simply don’t know that they have a similar problem and why they have it).

Error when file is larger than 4 GB

In the case of a torrent, the error looks like this: "One or more files exceed the file system size limit and cannot be downloaded."

In other cases, if my memory serves me correctly (and it happens :)), it sounds like “No access. The disk is full or write-protected.”

The essence of the problem is that the FAT32 file system (and users who encounter a similar problem use this particular file system) supports a maximum file size of 4,294,967,296 bytes and no more. Nothing can be done about it - that’s how it was intended from the very beginning.

The solution to the problem is to reformat or convert to the NTFS file system.

Solution 1

I’ll start with the second method as the most acceptable:

To start the conversion, do the following.

Start - Run - cmd

A console will open in front of you. Enter there:

convert D: /fs:ntfs

Where D: is the drive letter that you want to convert to NTFS format.
I don’t remember exactly, but I have an opinion that, as in the case of formatting, convert the system disk, i.e. the one where the system is currently located will not work. The way out of this is either formatting or connecting the hard drive to another computer.

Solution option 2

As for formatting...
It is impossible to do this without losing data, because formatting erases all files from the hard disk, and therefore you need to either be prepared for this and transfer all the information to external media, or simply buy a new disk and format it in the NTFS file system. To format, click:

My computer - Right-click on the desired drive- Format - File system: NTFS- we put "Quick Format" checkbox- Begin .

We are waiting for the formatting to finish.
Alternatively, to move files, you can cut them into pieces with special programs, but this will not solve the problem in the case of downloading files from the Internet, and is it even worth making a fuss? In addition, changing the file system to NTFS will also have a positive effect on the performance of the hard drive in Windows Vista, since both operating systems are designed to work with this file system.

Afterword

That's how things are. If you have questions, ask in the comments.

Attention for users of older operating systems (pre-XP). The NTFS file system is not supported by these versions of operating systems, i.e. You will not see the newly reformatted disk if you have one of the versions of Windows 95/98 family.