File Too Large?

[Scarlett]

I have two external hard drives which I am moving big files from one to another. They are avi (films) of around 10GB. Even though there is tons of room on each hard drive, when I try and move some across I get a message saying "the file XXX is too large for the destination file system". How come I can't move a file of 10GB into a hard drive even though there is easily space for it?

[Buenchico]

[Guilbert53]

The video posted above saggets FORMAT. If you do this you lose EVERYTHING off the external hard drive so dont do it.

Basically before a hard disk can be used it has to be formatted. When you buy an external hard drive it is usually already formatted.

Now there are basically two ways to format a hard drive - FAT32 and NTFS

The OLD way was FAT32 but this has a file size limit of 4GB I think it is.

The newer way is NTFS and this does not have the 4GB file size limit.

Are these (mainly the target one) old external hard drives? If so they may be formatted as FAT32.

To format as NTFS what you need to do is:

First copy all the files OFF the target external hard drive to another disk so it has NO files on it.

Then format it as NTFS

Then copy all the files back on to it.

Then it should be able to hold a file larger than 4GB.

But whatever you do DONT format it while all the files are still on it or you will lose all those files.

[Old_Geezer]

There are programmes that can change formats leaving your data intact, but best back everything up first anyway, just in case.

[TheChair]

As OG says - it's possible to convert a FAT32 drive to NTFS without losing data.
Find the letter of drive you want to convert. Open File Explorer, and in the left pane, look for the drive under "This PC" or "Computer."
Press the Windows logo key + R to open the Run dialog box.
Enter cmd to open the command prompt window.
At the command line prompt, type convert drive: /fs:ntfs.

[Scarlett]

Thank you! I would never had worked that out!!