Cant copy a large file to my external hard drive

Sep 2, 2004
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I bought a 500gb wd and when I tried to copy a 7.6 gb file to the drive an error saying that the file is to large came up. Does this has anything to do with the fact that its formatted in Fat32, can I convert it without losing the files currently in the drive? And also why would they sell it with fat 32 and not with NTFS to begin with?
 

Peter

Elite Member
Oct 15, 1999
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Yes. FAT32 has a file size limit of 4GiB.

External drives are preformatted with FAT32 because this is the only interoperable file system. FAT32 can be plugged everywhere - any Windows flavor, Linux, Apple, whatever.
 

ForumMaster

Diamond Member
Feb 24, 2005
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Originally posted by: Peter
Yes. FAT32 has a file size limit of 4GiB.

External drives are preformatted with FAT32 because this is the only interoperable file system. FAT32 can be plugged everywhere - any Windows flavor, Linux, Apple, whatever.

exactly. if you're just using windows, you can easily convert the drive to NTFS and gain better secuirty plus bigger file size support. just follow these instructions. and be aware that linux won't work with it, and apple machines will only be able to read files, not write.