I plugged in a USB drive that already contains five episodes of a series, and it has worked normally through many connections. However, when I tried copying a movie that is about 4 GB, Windows reported: "The file is too large for the destination file system." A capacity check shows the drive still has around 50 GB of free space. What is causing this, and how can I fix it?
3 Answers
Before reformatting, copy the existing files somewhere safe because formatting erases the drive. FAT32 is mainly useful for compatibility with older hardware; for a modern USB drive, exFAT gives you much larger file support while remaining broadly compatible.
The USB drive is probably formatted as FAT32. FAT32 can store lots of data, but it has a maximum individual file size of about 4 GB, so free space won’t help with this particular movie. You can either split the file or back up the contents, reformat the drive as NTFS or exFAT, and copy everything back.
ExFAT is usually the best choice if you need to use the drive with different computers and devices. NTFS is a good option if the drive will mainly be used with Windows, but some TVs, phones, consoles, and other devices may not support writing to it.
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