The Lemon Fool

Hi

I've purchased a 128GB USB drive to backup my files. I have a few Mp4 files, the ones below about 4GB in size are ok but when i transfer the ones above that size i get the message the file is too large for the destination file system. Is there going to be no way I can backup these files on my new USB drive?

Thanks

I'm going to hazard a guess that your USB drive is formatted as FAT32 which has a 4GB limit.

You need to reformat it as something else - see what options your machine gives you but exFAT or NTFS should be able to handle the > 4GB files.

(Reformatting the USB drive will, of course, obliterate anything stored on it)

You haven't stated which OS you need it to work with but if W10 mostly then NTFS will give you the advantage of being journaled and you'll be able to send TRIM commands to the drive over USB.
If you need more native OS flexibility go for exFAT - you also can get third party software support for multi OS NTFS/exFAT read/write.
This Android one if free...https://www.paragon-software.com/free/e ... s-android/

Andy46 wrote:I've purchased a 128GB USB drive to backup my files. I have a few Mp4 files, the ones below about 4GB in size are ok but when i transfer the ones above that size i get the message the file is too large for the destination file system...

That implies that the drive is formatted as Fat32, which has a 4GB size limit for individual files.

I find it odd that it came formatted as Fat32. What sort of drive is this? A USB stick? Or an external SSD? At that size it could be either. Usually it's only USB sticks that use Fat32. Either way, reformatting as ExFat or NTFS will solve this problem - it will also erase everything you have already put on it

There are tools than can convert Fat32 to NTFS without data loss. MiniTool's free Partition Wizard (part of Partition Magic) is one....

Portable version here: https://www.partitionwizard.com/partiti ... magic.html

Assuming windows,

At a command line,
Convert X: /FS:NTFS

Where X is the drive letter of the usb drive

Will convert the file format without data loss.

Midsmartin wrote:Assuming windows,

At a command line,
Convert X: /FS:NTFS

Where X is the drive letter of the usb drive

Will convert the file format without data loss.

I've just tried that on a 16GB USB stick, it said it couldn't do the conversion.

Determining disk space required for file system conversion...
Total disk space: 15263744 KB
Free space on volume: 6860232 KB
Space required for conversion: 41709 KB
Cannot create the elementary file system structures.
The conversion failed.
D: was not converted to NTFS

Turns out that if you have Controlled Folder Access turned on in Windows Security then it will be blocked. Turned it off then could convert, though the final line of its output was worrying....

Data error (cyclic redundancy check).

Hi

Thanks. I re-formatted it using exFAT, seems to work now.