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The movie is too large on the destination file system. The file is too large for the destination file system: how to fix it? How to transfer a large file to a flash drive without losing data

Jun 21 2018

The other day my parents called me, they were faced with the problem of moving the “Move Up” video file from a computer to a USB flash drive, for comfortable viewing of the movie on a large TV. There was a problem copying the video, the file is too large for the destination file system.

The volume of the movie was about 5 gigabytes, the portable storage medium was 8 gigabytes, everything seems to be fine, but the problem turned out to be in the file usb system carrier. The USB was formatted in the FAT32 file system. I suggested a simple solution, format the USB flash drive to the NTFS file system. After they did this, the movie was successfully copied to USB and enjoyed on the TV.

Solving the problem the file is too large

Format device
File system conversion
Splitting a file with the WinRAR archiver
7-zip is our helper

In the Fat32 file system, you can work with files up to 4 gigabytes in size.

In the file NTFS system maximum size file is about 16 terabytes.

Video instruction of today's article

Formatting the device

Go to devices and disks, select desired device, click on it with the right mouse button and then format.

In the file system tab, change FAT32 to NTFS, leave a checkmark for quick (cleaning the table of contents) formatting and click start.

A warning appears. Attention! Formatting will destroy all information on this drive. Select OK to start formatting, or Cancel not to.

After completion, the corresponding notification formatting the device is completed will appear.

Converting the file system

The second method is a little more complicated, but will save all the information on your device. Open command line or Windows PowerShell- press two buttons on the keyboard "Win + R".

In the run window, type the command "convert Z: / FS: NTFS", without quotes, where "Z" needs to be changed to the letter of your device.

A window appears with a command prompt and disk information. If the volume is used in this moment, a notification about this will appear and it is proposed to disconnect the disk. Press "Y (yes)" to continue.

Wait for the conversion to complete and use the flash drive.

Cutting a file with winrar

The third way is to divide the desired fragment into several parts and transfer it in parts.

I propose to use popular program Winrar. You can find and download it yourself via the Internet, or use my links below. First on the official website, free period of 40 days, you can purchase a license for 25 dollars. The second link to a regular archiver with a key. The rarreg.key file from the installation archive must be copied to the folder with the program. My path is "C:\Program Files\WinRAR".

We find desired file, right-click on it, in the pop-up menu select add to archive, or archive with the file name.

The archiving options open, go to the general tab. At the bottom left, divide into volumes in size, specify MB or GB (as you prefer) and divide approximately in half. If the file is large, then divide by 3 - 3.5 gigabytes.

The compression process begins, a 5.5 gigabyte video file is compressed in about 6 minutes.

Upon completion, we have two archives that can be transferred one by one or together to other disks or computers.

After the transfer, extract the archives with the necessary information.

7-zip to help us

The last method is the 7-zip archiver, an alternative to winrar. This utility is free, you can find it on the official website.

We also select the desired file, right-click, go to 7-zip, add to the archive.

In the settings, open the block size tab, set 1 gigabyte, split into 1000M volumes and click OK.

Compression speed 20 Mb/s, time about 5 minutes.

Upon completion, 6 archives appear that can be copied to portable media and extracted to the desired location.

To extract, right-click on the first archive, go to 7-zip, extract or extract here.

From six archives, one file is assembled in less than a minute.

Summing up

Today we have solved the problem the file is too large for the final file system in four ways: formatting, converting, winrar and 7-zip archivers.

I hope you have solved the problem with the file too large to move, share your thoughts in the comments below this article, or use the form with me.

Also, you can ask any questions related to computer topics On the page .

If the above information turned out to be useful to you, then I recommend subscribing to my blog updates to always be aware of fresh and relevant information on setting up your computer.

– Igor (Administrator)

In this article, I will tell you about the "File is too large for the destination file system" error, what causes it and what you can do.

The size hard drive or flash drives is the characteristic that users most often pay attention to. Still, it's simple, the larger the size, the more you can store any useful and useless information. You need to create a backup, just copy the files. However, not everyone thinks about how this whole process happens. Therefore, they may encounter such errors. And the most annoying thing here is that the error "The file is too large for the target file system" can appear at the most inopportune moment. For example, when you are in a hurry.

Previously, the size of disks was not so large, so file systems (the technology for distributing data from files and directories in hardware devices) were calculated, albeit with a margin, but still within certain assumptions. At the time of the appearance of FAT32, it was believed that files of 4 GB or more were simply a rarity, or rather, an hardly achievable limit for home life. Therefore, this 4 GB is the maximum file size limit. This is where the error comes from.

Of course, today this figure seems ridiculous. However, FAT32 has been around for a very long time and was considered one of the best standards of the time. Therefore, it is supported by almost any operating system (not only Windows) and technology.

When flash drives began to appear, their size was so small (16 MB, 128 MB, and so on) that FAT32 was chosen as the main file system technology. No one expected that flash drives of this size would appear in the near future.

And due to the fact that all equipment and operating systems rely on this format, external drives and flash drives are still released with this file system by default. What Beginners Don't Know ordinary users, and, as a result, face problems when copying large amounts of data.

By the way, this is how the error "The file is too large for the destination file system" looks like

A lot of time has passed since that time, and it is not surprising that corresponding file systems have appeared where there is no such problem. For example, Microsoft has created Windows format NTFS, which today is the main one for Windows 7 and above.

Note: Here it is worth understanding that other operating systems or equipment may not support this format. Therefore, this point should be checked in advance. However, today this format is supported more and more.

If you read carefully, you probably already guessed that the only solution to this problem is formatting external drive or flash drives desired format, namely the conversion from FAT32 to NTFS (in the case of Windows). How to do this is described in detail in the article How to format a hard drive. It describes in detail the sequence of actions, and there is also a link to the article for the case with a flash drive (or external drive).

A few important tips:

1. Remember that data is deleted when formatting. Therefore, before performing any action, be sure to save your data to another disk or another flash drive. But not in the next directory! He, too, will be removed.

2. Some operating systems (including Windows) have tools for converting file systems without data cleansing. However, it is important to understand that if failures occur during this process (for example, surges in the power supply), data may be lost or it will take a long time to restore them. Therefore, even in this case, it is strongly recommended to attend to the issue of creating a backup copy.

If you often use flash drives to transfer data, at some point you will sooner or later encounter the error “The file is too large for the destination file system”. Quite a nasty bug, as it blocks any possibility of copying a large file to removable media. Fortunately, understanding the essence of this trouble, as well as fixing it, is quite easy.

What to do if the file is too large for the destination file system

First of all, you need to understand what caused this error. The vast majority of flash drives and memory cards are formatted in the FAT32 file system by default. This is due to the small size of the storage and other features of these drives. The thing is that the FAT32 file system, unlike NTFS, can only work with files no larger than 4 GB. Everything that is more than 4 GB cannot physically "fit" on such a flash drive. You will not be able to copy the file even if there is enough space on the drive. The file system simply cannot process such a file.

There are several ways to get out of the situation. Start by changing the file system of your flash drive. Changing FAT32 to NTFS will not adversely affect your disk and in no way worsen its performance, but larger files can be safely copied.

If there is no important data on the drive, simply reformat the drive using Explorer.

If there is important data on the disk and formatting the media is not an option, you can change the file system using the command line. It is not necessary to download third-party utilities, since the usual command line can easily handle this task.

Again, after this procedure, you will be able to copy files larger than 4 GB without any problems.

These two methods are effective in the vast majority of cases, but there are still scenarios where converting the file system is not an option. The fact is that NTFS is a proprietary file system. Windows system, and therefore disks formatted in it are often simply not readable on devices with other operating systems (macOS, for example, does not understand NTFS media) or TVs, for example. In this case, you need to choose one of the following options:

If it's a multimedia file (a movie, for example), try finding a smaller copy. The Internet is full of various options films. Some fit in 700 MB and some reach 100 GB.
Format the drive with the ExFat file system. In this case, compatibility will remain, but the restriction will disappear (the limits of this file system are slightly different). It's not certain that your device is 100% ExFat capable, but it's definitely worth a try. Converting the file system to ExFat is done in exactly the same way as in the case of FAT32-NTFS.
If you are trying to copy not a media file, but a disk image or any other file, great option the file will be split into several parts using any convenient archiver. 7Zip is our favorite option. The app is free, lightweight and easy to use. Just run it, find the file you need, right click on it and select split file. Part of the file should not exceed 4 GB, because parts will be copied separate files, and then glued together on the final device. If the file is too large and two of its parts still exceed 4 GB, split it into large quantity parts.

We do not recommend trying to archive files and try to compress them, since this idea will have little effect, and in the case of multimedia files, there will be practically no effect at all. In this case, it will be much more efficient to split the file into parts without archiving.

When performing various operations with disks, primarily with flash drives, users often encounter an operating system alert - "The file is too large for the destination file system." We will receive such an alert when working with files larger than 4 Gigabytes. What is the matter and how to cope with this problem? After all, now often files (primarily high-definition movies) weigh more than 4 gigabytes?

The thing is that, often buying a USB flash drive, we do not even suspect that the disk space on it is marked in the FAT32 file system, and, in turn, the FAT32 system cannot work with files larger than 4 Gigabytes. The same thing sometimes happens when working with partitions on hard drives - perhaps we ourselves, unaware of the limitations of certain file systems, formatted them in FAT32. The older FAT16 (or simply FAT) file system, in turn, does not work with files larger than 2 GB.

In order to safely continue working with large files, you need to format the media in the file system that would allow you to work with files of 4 or more gigabytes. There are now two such main systems at the disposal of the user - these are NTFS and exFAT. The NTFS file system allows you to safely work with files, the size of which can reach 16 Terabytes, and this is enough for most modern users. Relatively new system exFAT can handle files up to 16 exabytes in size.

The easiest way for us will be to format either our media - a flash drive, or a logical drive in the NTFS file system, after which the problem large files for the final file system will not bother us anymore. You can do this with the following steps:

The simplest is to format the media from the Explorer menu. To do this, we must go to the root folder in Explorer, where we will see all the media connected to the computer. By connecting external media in advance (for example, a USB flash drive or external hard disk), we see in Explorer and it.

Then right-click on the disk that refuses to work with large files and in the drop-down menu we find the "Format" section. Do not forget that formatting will destroy all data on the disk and first save everything you need to another medium.

The formatting window appears. In the drop-down section "file system" select NTFS. The cluster size in the next section can be set to 4096 bytes or "standard cluster size".

Then we press the "Start" button and wait for the result.

Formatting in the operating system from the Disk Management section

You can also find required disk and through the Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Storage Devices - Disk Management. We select the medium we need there and, in the same way, through right button, mouse select the line Format. We make the same choice as in the first method, and press the OK button.

Formatting media using the command line

It is possible to format the media from the command line, for example, using the built-in Windows Utilities Diskpart or the format command loop.

In the command line window that appears, enter: format / fs: NTFS H: / q - where:

format – formatting task;
fs:NTFS - description of the file system we choose;
H: - the drive we need;
/q - this part of the command denotes a quick format for complete removal data.

Or by calling the utility for working with drives Diskpart. V command line typing commands:

diskpart; disk selection with the list disk and select disk commands; with the active command, we make the disk active, and then select the file system we need by entering format command fs=ntfs. Using the assign command, we assign a letter to the media, after which a window automatically appears with the media already formatted in the file system we need.

File system conversion without data loss

The media can also be converted from the FAT32 file system to NTFS without data loss. To do this, you need to use the command line. In order to call the command line, launch the Start menu and enter the cmd command in the search bar.

Then, in the command line, type the command: convert H: / FS: NTFS - where H is the letter of the disk, disk partition or flash drive selected for converting. Press Enter.

How can we get rid of the problem when operating system notifies us that "the file is too large for the target file system" is solved quite simply. The question is in which file system this or that medium is marked. We change the file system and get rid of the problem, including by converting without losing data on the media.

The error "The file is too large for the target system" pops up when recording a movie, game, and 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?

Everything is simple. The reason for the error is this: by default, a USB flash drive purchased from 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 over 4 GB. That is why large files are not copied to the USB flash drive. And it doesn't matter: it's a movie, a game, Windows image or something else.

There are 2 ways to write a large file to a USB flash drive. The first is without data loss, the second is with full formatting. Let's start with the first, 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 USB 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 opposite the "File system" item.

At the same time, the data remained in place. Now you can safely write a file larger than 4 GB to a USB flash drive.

Perhaps, when performing this operation, you will get the error "This disk is marked as dirty."

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

Write large files to a USB 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 that, do the following: