Thanks Dave, huge help!! Never would i have imagined to be so damn difficult to move large files around when disk space is available. I went with ExFAT as well, sharing combined vacation video with many family members and all kinds of devices, inc DVD players. Click the Erase button and the drive will start formatting. Be aware that formatting a drive deletes all of the files on it, so back up anything important before completing this step. Format a drive using Windows. Go to Computer (or My Computer in Windows XP). Select your drive from the list and right-click on it. Choose Format from the contextual menu.
My flash drive is 32GB, but on my mac when I try to copy my 8.74GB.iso file onto it it gives me an error that the file is too large for the volume format. Is there any way I can fix this?
I have already tried formatting the flash drive many times and it is completely empty. Right click on your flash drive and select 'Properties' to see what 'File System' your drive have.
If it says 'FAT32', then that could be the problem. Because 'FAT32' file system has limitations and will give you problem, when you try to copy huge size single file that are larger than 4GB.
So in order to over come this problem, you may need to convert your flash drive 'File System' from 'FAT32' to 'NTFS'. How to convert from FAT32 to NTFS: Important Note: Before you continue backup data from your flash drive, to prevent any data loss while attempting the conversion. I've done conversion with data in the flash drive successfully, no loss of data. But as a precautionary measure it's better do backup data. Make sure your flash drive is properly connected.
Click on 'Start', then click on 'Run' to bring up the 'Run' dialog box. Type 'cmd' (without quotes), and press enter on your keyboard to bring up the 'Command Prompt' - Type the following command to convert from FAT32 to NTFS: convert g: /fs:ntfs /v convert - is the command g: - is the drive letter of my flash drive.
Your flash drive letter may vary, so replace the g: with your flash drive letter. /fs:ntfs - this switch will convert from FAT32 to NTFS /v - Verbose, will give you details of the conversion as it happens. Wait till you get 'conversion successfully completed' mesage.
Exit the command prompt. Now you can try copying the huge single file and should be able to complete the task with ease.
Have you ever formatted a disk on your own? Or Attempting to format a disk for the very first time?
Then, you should definitely read this post as it is going to tell you why it is important to set the right allocation unit size while formatting a drive. Now, what do you mean by ‘Allocation unit size’? It is also known as or can be addressed as ‘Cluster size’.
The cluster size determines the can be defined as the tiniest chunk of disk space that holds a file. When you begin to format a partition into one of the file systems such as NTFS, FAT, exFAT etc., Windows makes use of the default values if formatting is done by one of the following methods and they are:.
By using the ‘FORMAT’ command from the command line without mentioning the cluster size;. When the Allocation Unit box in the Format dialog box lists Default Allocation Size while formatting a drive from Windows Explorer. However, it is advisable to keep the allocation size small if lots of small files are present.
This will help in saving disk space. But, if the size of the files is large, it is a good idea to keep the allocation size big. This will eventually enhance the system’s performance. Our Hard drives are divided into clusters and the size of the allocation unit determine the size of a single cluster. The file system in which the hard drive is formatted keeps track or record of the state of the clusters present.
When a file or a portion of the file is written on any cluster, it is marked as or considered to be occupied. If the size of the clusters is small, the speed with which the hard drive performs becomes slower. It happens because each file is broken into small pieces and it takes a significant amount of time gather all the broken pieces of the file in one place and access them as one. And, if the size of the cluster is large, the space on the disk will be wasted. Hence, there is no absolute benchmark for setting the size of the allocation unit. If the size of the files you wish to store on the drive is large then a large cluster size is recommended.
This will also increase the speed with which the drive will perform. If you are planning to store smaller sized files than a small cluster size will do the deed.
It will preserve the space on the disk. Note: Formatting a drive into any file system comes with a catch.
If the formatting is done in an improper way or if the process faces some kind of interruption, you may lose the data on your drive.