#Common large size file format for mac and windows how to#

These newer file systems do not have the 4GB file size limitation! Scroll down this page for the instructions on how to change the file system. In any case, how to solve the problem of copying the 4GB files? Easy: you need to replace the FAT32 file system on the drive with a more modern one, such as NTFS or exFAT. Or, maybe the designers hoped that by the time such large files become common, the use of the FAT32 system would be replaced by the more modern systems. This limitation may sound silly: why would anyone design a system that would not allow for the larger files? The problem is, when the FAT32 file system was designed (that was back in the days of Windows 95), no one anticipated that we would have such large files in use today.

Although the total size of the files that you can copy to a FAT32 drive could be as large as 2TB (or the physical capacity of the drive, whichever is smaller), the size of each individual file may not exceed 4GB. This type of a file system has a built-in limitation on the size of the files that it may contain. If you experience such a problem, most probably it’s caused by the fact that your external drive or card is formatted with the FAT32 file system.

Yet, when you attempt to copy a large file (4GB or larger) to the external drive, Windows gives you an error (such as: There is not enough free space on the drive, or similar.) Does this sound familiar? You can copy the smaller files to the external drive just fine. The capacity of your external flash drive or SD card is large: 8GB, 16GB, or more. Encrypt and password-protect external drives with USBCrypt encryption software for Windows 10,8,7, and XP.