“The file is too large”: what to do if data is not written to the flash drive. How to format a flash drive in NTFS in order to transfer a large file? A large file cannot be written to a flash drive

Yesterday, a friend purchased a new 16 GB flash drive and tried to copy a file of just over 4 GB in size to it; to his surprise, the operating system notified that the file was too large for the target file system.

He tried to format it and copy the same file again, but without success. The fact is that by default flash drives have the FAT32 file system, which allows you to transfer files only up to 4 GB. For example, a friend has a 16 GB flash drive, he could put 4 files of 3 GB each with “kopecks” or a bunch of “small” files onto this flash drive. The problem can be solved in three clicks. You just need to change the file system on the flash drive from FAT32 to NTFS. To do this, open MY COMPUTER, on the flash drive you need to right-click, in context menu choose Format...

In the window that appears, select the NTFS file system and click the START button.

The system will notify you that formatting will destroy all data on the flash drive . You need to click the [OK] button. Upon completion of formatting, you will receive a flash drive with file system NTFS. After these simple manipulations, you will be able to copy files larger than 4 GB to a flash drive.

If you already have some files on the flash drive and you don’t want to format them, then you can do it a little differently, change the file system to NTFS using the command line. To do this, call the Run command using the R key combination.

Users often encounter an error when trying to write a large file to a flash drive. This usually happens when trying to write a file larger than 4 GB. The system reports that the file is too large and refuses to write. At the same time, at the time of recording, there may be several tens of free gigabytes on the flash drive, but they cannot be used. If you are faced with a similar problem, then this article should help you. Here you will find out why the system refuses to record large files on a flash drive and how it can be fixed.

The reason this problem occurs is that most flash drives come from the factory with the FAT32 file system. This file system is quite old and therefore has many limitations, which are very noticeable in modern realities. In particular, the FAT32 file system does not support files larger than 4 gigabytes.

In order to get rid of this limitation and write files of any size to a flash drive, you need to change the file system of the flash drive from FAT32 to NTFS. This can be done in two ways: by formatting the flash drive in NTFS or by converting the file system from FAT32 to NTFS. Next we will look at both of these methods.

Method number 1. Formatting a flash drive.

The easiest way to get the ability to write files big size this is on a flash drive. In this case, all files from the flash drive will be deleted. Therefore, before formatting, you need to transfer them to a computer or another flash drive.

So, in order to format a flash drive in NTFS, you need to open “My Computer” and right-click on your flash drive. In the menu that opens, select “Format”.

As a result, a small window will open in front of you to format the flash drive. Here, in the “File system” drop-down menu, the “FAT32” option will be selected. You need to open this drop-down menu and select the NTFS file system.

The remaining settings can be left unchanged. After changing the file system, simply click on the “Start” button.

After this, you will see a warning about deleting files from the flash drive. In order to continue you need to click on the “Ok” button.

After this, the system will begin formatting the flash drive to NTFS. Typically the formatting process only takes a couple of seconds. Once everything is ready, you will see a corresponding message.

Method No. 2. Converting the file system from FAT32 to NTFS.

The second way to get the opportunity to write large files to a flash drive is to perform. When converting the file system, the files on the flash drive are saved. But, you still need to do backup copy files. Because if the conversion process fails, files may be lost.

In order to convert the file system, you need to open “Command Prompt” with administrator rights and run the command “ convert X: /FS:NTFS" In this case, the letter “X” must be replaced with the letter that was assigned to your flash drive when connected.

After executing this command, the system will begin converting the file system. The time required for conversion depends on the size of the flash drive, its speed and the number of files. But, in most cases, the conversion takes place in less than 1 minute. After completing the conversion to " Command line" a message will appear indicating that the conversion is complete.

Now you can try to write a large file to the flash drive. If everything was done correctly, now files larger than 4 GB will be written without problems.

So, you don’t have Internet at home, you don’t have movies, you carry games home on a USB flash drive. For this purpose, go to the store and buy a larger flash drive of 16, or even 32 Gig.

Solving the problem of writing files larger than 4 gigabytes to a USB flash drive

You download your favorite file in a place where you have access to the Internet, and woe is it, you can’t write it to a flash drive; after repeated attempts, we get one answer: the file is too large for the final file system, this is exactly the answer the user gets from a huge USB flash drives when trying to record a movie that weighs more than 4 gigabytes. And this is when, in our advanced times, in the presence of an excellent quality HDTV or HD video format, we, having purchased a large-capacity flash drive on purpose, receive such an answer, we are, to put it mildly, shocked.

The first thought was that they sold us a marriage. Which, in principle, is quite possible when purchasing flash drives from the Internet from sites of dubious origin. But we will consider a situation where the flash drive is fully operational and meets the expected characteristics. Then we start googling hysterically: what’s the problem, what happened? And Google advises, dear users world wide web you can use special ones software cut your film into parts smaller than 4 gigabytes, and what if it is an archive? The answer is the same, the Win RAR program can divide archives into parts in almost arbitrary form. Then we ask, maybe we have a disk image with the game? And again we get the answer: dear users, the image can also be divided into such parts as you want.

But the user is not satisfied with such a complex process of working with large files, and after rustling around the forums, he understands: the dog is buried in the size of the flash drive clusters and if we change them, then happiness will come to us. And we get into the weeds again: they will tell us that there are a bunch of utilities for resizing USB cluster flash drives, but the truth is that not all are suitable; not all of them do what is needed. And as always, everything turns out to be much simpler, and the result was, in fact, right under our noses.

As a result, we learn that we need to format the USB to NTFS format. So what if you have Win 7 and higher, then go to the flash drive menu, click the format tab and select the NTFS format. And fortunately, we have the ability to record a file of any size, which does not exceed the capacity of the flash drive. If you are still using XP, then everything is a little more complicated, but nevertheless solvable: go to the properties of my computer, device manager, disk devices, USB device, right properties and click the policy tab, in it check the optimize performance section. And now we get the opportunity to format flash drives from XP. for NTFS format.

I would like to note that the default FAT 32 recording format provided for quick removal of the flash drive, which means there is less chance of it being damaged if it is disconnected from the computer incorrectly. While it is recommended to remove a flash drive formatted for NTFS using software methods, since there is a risk of losing not only data, but also the drive itself.

Therefore, I would like to warn you that you perform all actions with your flash drive at your own peril and risk.

Hello dear visitors. Yesterday they asked me a question: what should I do? I can’t transfer a large file to a flash drive? The system says that there is not enough disk space, but there is enough space on the flash drive. It was necessary to copy a movie of about 9 GB in size to a 16 GB flash drive. If you think logically, then everything should fit, but the system refused to put such a large file on a flash drive and that’s it.

I knew what was going on, and while I was explaining what needed to be done, a bright thought appeared in my head that I should write about this on a blog, so I’m actually writing it :). Let's first explain why large files, or to be precise, files larger than 4 GB do not want to be written to the flash drive and a message appears that there is not enough disk space.

The fact is that when you buy a flash drive, it is already formatted in the file system FAT32, and the file system is FAT32 does not support files larger than 4 GB. Here's the thing, it's very simple. We need to change the file system of the flash drive from FAT32 to NTFS. Because the NTFS file system supports, if I'm not mistaken, files up to 16 GB.

This question is becoming more and more relevant every day, because the size of memory on flash drives is growing and they are becoming cheaper every day. You can already buy a 16 GB flash drive for the same money that a year ago you could only buy a 4 GB one.

We just need to change the file system of our flash drive from FAT32 to NTFS. I will now write two ways in which this can be done.

Format the flash drive to the NTFS file system

A window will open in which we need to select the NTFS file system, select and click “Start”. We agree to the system warning.

After the formatting process is completed, you will receive a clean flash drive with file NTFS system, to which you can copy large files.

Converting a flash drive to NTFS for writing large files

The second method is to simply convert the flash drive to NTFS, this method essentially differs from the first, only in that the files you have on the flash drive will not be lost. But I still advise you not to risk it and copy necessary files on computer.

Our flash drive is connected and recognized by the computer. We go to “Start”, "All programs", “Standard” and select “Run”. Or just press Win+R. A window will open in which we write the command cmd and click “Ok”.

A window will open in which we need to enter a command to convert the flash drive to NTFS:

convert k : /fs:ntfs /nosecurity /x

Where k is the letter that the computer assigned to your flash drive, go to "My computer" and see what letter you have. Enter this command and press “Enter”.

After this procedure, my files that were on the flash drive remained intact. That's all, this was the second way you can make a flash drive accept large files.

And one more note, do not format the flash drive in NTFS format if you plan to use it as bootable, that is, you will install from it operating system By the way, I already wrote about that. Good luck!