Re: Disk Space Limitation on File Copying

Andrew wrote:
I am trying to copy a 5+GB file from my C: drive to an USB connected external hard drive. I have 14+GB free space on my C: drive and 160+GB free space on my external HD. I get prompted that there is not enough disk space and to free up some disk space to perform my copy. I can copy a 3+GB file from C: to the external HD without problem, so I believe there is some limitation and perhaps some configuration setting I can change to allow me to copy a large file from one physical drive to another physical drive. Does anyone have a solution to my problem?


What is the file system in use on the USB external drive, FAT32 or NTFS? FAT32 cannot handle files larger than 4 Gb.

Limitations of the FAT32 File System in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=kb;en-us;Q314463

If this is the case, the solution would be to convert the external drive's file system to NTFS. Do so only if the drive won't be used to connect to a Win9x/Me PC.

You can safely convert your current hard drive to NTFS whenever desired, without having to format the partition and reinstall everything. As always when performing any serious changes, back up any important data before proceeding, just in case. A little advance preparation is also strongly recommended, so you can avoid any performance hits caused by the default cluster size:

Converting FAT32 to NTFS in Windows
http://www.aumha.org/a/ntfscvt.htm


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