You have an external drive with capacity 8GB, 16 GB and more. You try to copy large files over 4GB to a USB flash drive but an error shows up such as "There is not enough free space on the drive" even though there is enough free space in your external drive. If you experience such a problem, is probably because that your flash drive is formatted with the FAT32 file system
How to solve the problem of copying the 4GB files?
You need to replace the FAT32 file system on the drive with the NTFS file system. It does not have the 4GB file size limitation, and it also allows for many other functions not supported by FAT32: file security, encryption, compression, etc.
However: the older versions of Windows ( Windows 95, 98, or Windows Millennium) do not support the NTFS file system. If you plan on using the drive with old computers, then DO NOT format the drive with NTFS, because you won’t be able to get the old Windows to recognize it anyway. However, if you only plan on using the drive with the more recent versions of Windows(Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7) you can use the NTFS file system.
Specifically:
1. Attach the external flash drive to the computer, wait for Windows to recognize it.
2. Open the Computer folder and locate the drive letter assigned to the flash drive you want to format with NTFS (in the example below, it’s drive F:)
3. Before continuing, open the drive in a window and make sure it’s empty or does not contain any important files, because after you format a drive, all information that was on it will be erased!
4. If you are sure that the external drive contains no important files of yours, go back to the Computer folder, and right click on the icon of the external drive.
5. Select Format from the menu, and then choose the formatting options:
6. Make sure to select NTFS in the File System drop-down list. That’s
what determines the kind of a file system that the drive should have.
Also, you may want to select the Quick Format option, which should speed up the formatting process quite considerably.
7. Press Start, and Windows should warn you once again about erasing any existing information on the drive.
As a result, you should have the same drive, but now it should have the NTFS files system on it. Now you should be able to copy the files larger than 4GB to the drive just fine.
In addition to formatting a drive with the NTFS file system, Windows also offers a way to convert a FAT32 drive to NTFS. The difference is that with this conversion process the existing files on the drive are not erased.
How to solve the problem of copying the 4GB files?
You need to replace the FAT32 file system on the drive with the NTFS file system. It does not have the 4GB file size limitation, and it also allows for many other functions not supported by FAT32: file security, encryption, compression, etc.
However: the older versions of Windows ( Windows 95, 98, or Windows Millennium) do not support the NTFS file system. If you plan on using the drive with old computers, then DO NOT format the drive with NTFS, because you won’t be able to get the old Windows to recognize it anyway. However, if you only plan on using the drive with the more recent versions of Windows(Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7) you can use the NTFS file system.
How to change the drive from FAT32 to NTFS format?
There are several ways to go. If the drive is empty or contains no important files of yours, the easiest way is to use the Windows Format command to format the drive with the NTFS file system.Specifically:
1. Attach the external flash drive to the computer, wait for Windows to recognize it.
2. Open the Computer folder and locate the drive letter assigned to the flash drive you want to format with NTFS (in the example below, it’s drive F:)
3. Before continuing, open the drive in a window and make sure it’s empty or does not contain any important files, because after you format a drive, all information that was on it will be erased!
4. If you are sure that the external drive contains no important files of yours, go back to the Computer folder, and right click on the icon of the external drive.
5. Select Format from the menu, and then choose the formatting options:
7. Press Start, and Windows should warn you once again about erasing any existing information on the drive.
As a result, you should have the same drive, but now it should have the NTFS files system on it. Now you should be able to copy the files larger than 4GB to the drive just fine.
In addition to formatting a drive with the NTFS file system, Windows also offers a way to convert a FAT32 drive to NTFS. The difference is that with this conversion process the existing files on the drive are not erased.
