I’ve seen this error too and what you’re missing is the critical last few words of the error itself. It actually says “item can’t be copied because it is too large for the volume’s format.” That “for the volume’s format” is critical, because most vendors — Kingston included — ship flash drives with a default format of Windows (FAT). A bit of digging reveals that the max filesize supported on the File Allocation Table (FAT) version of the Windows file system is 4GB. So even if the flash drive has tons and tons of available space, the sad fact is that your file is too big for the file format.
But there’s another possibility that I see a lot of people trip over with flash drives too, even when the files are smaller than 4GB, that you haven’t emptied your trash yet. It works like this: You have an 8GB flash drive. You have 6GB of files on it. You drag them all to the Trash, then check your free space. It’s 1.6GB. What? Empty your Trash and it’ll both empty whatever trashed files you have on the computer itself and the files you’ve dragged to the Trash from your USB flash drive too. Confusing, yes. And it’s true on both Mac and Windows.
Now back to the file too big for the FAT format problem. Here’s the error message you’re probably seeing:
To fix it, we’re going to need to reformat the flash drive. That’s done by finding the “Disk Utility” program that’s included with Mac OS X in the “Utilities” folder within the “Applications” folder. It looks like this:
You can confirm by looking at all the stats at the bottom of the window. Here’s what I see for my Kingston drive:
Got the right unit? Click on the “Erase” tab then pick “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” — my recommendation for flash drive formats, though it does make it unreadable on a Windows PC — and enter a new name for the device if you’re so inspired:
99 thoughts on “File too big error copying to USB flash drive on my Mac?”
I have successfully saved a project from imovie on my desktop, as well as converted it with “Burn”. It is now prepared to export onto some sort of portable device. The file info says that the file is “8.27 GB”. I am trying to copy the file to a USB. With your tutorial help, I am aware of the formatting of the USB, etc., and have read that there is a limit of 4GB file size for transferring data to a USB with FAT32 formatting. I also see that I can transfer bigger files if I were to use the EXFAT[which I understand can be read by a MAC or a Windows] or the MAC OS Extended[which I understand can only be read on a MAC], etc options, BUT these solutions do not guarantee that the information will be able to be used with older equipment, etc. I really need a solution that can have the files transferred to AND that can be used by almost any operating system.
Help? Thanks, in advance, for your time and expertise!!
thank you, you’re a lifesaver on movie night!
thank you so much i also have the same problem before transferring large files…noe i can transfer it easily by formatting it by Mac OS Extended (journaled)…thanks
Thank you SO much! I had to transfer a large video file last-minute, and I was getting the same error. I was lucky enough to stumble upon your website, and, fortunately, was able to transfer my video file over to my flash drive.
Once again, thank you so much for the help!
Thank You! You just saved my Uni project =))
Thank you
I’ve been having this problem with 2 USB drives, is it possible that the file is to blame? Also, my computer runs windows so is there an alternative way of doing this on windows?
Thank you so much! You saved “Movie Night”!
You are a lifesaver! Thank you so much.
Thank you SO much!!! This fixed my problem perfectly!
All I had to do was empty the trash like you suggested. It worked! Thanks alot!
Great help! Thanks a lot!
I get an error that it couldn’t unmount disk? What do I do from here?
Hi There
I have a lot of photos on my harddrive it i erase will i loose all those files?
Thanks
yes. If you change the format of your flash drive, it’ll wipe it clean. SAVE THE PHOTOS FIRST!
Thanks ever so much. I had a 32gb flash, and 28gb file that wouldn’t go on, I almost tore out my hair but I’d had a haircut already. It is a very important file that needs sending asap so really, God bless you for sharing.
Thank you! Turns out all of my USBs were FAT?!
Thank you!
Ok I need to make sure I understand this.
I already have 87gigs on the 500g external hard drive I am saving to.
By doing this, will EVERYTHING be deleted from my drive? Or is it just reformatting so I can move the ms-dos files?
thx so much u saved me a project grade
Dave, really appreciate the effort. I love it when folks take their time to share their “savoir faire” in a easy way
Thanks tis helped a ton
Thanks a million!
Thanks for the info , much appreiacted
Cheers Kon
Thank you for posting this – it was a big help!
Thank you so much Dave. This was much faster and easier than I thought it would be, such a simple solution and it worked fantastic!
Thank you so much. This is the best mac tutorial I’ve ever seen.
Thanks for the information however, my thumb drive comes back with an error – Couldn’t unmount disk. Can you please give me another idea or option.
Thanks, that worked. You Rock
wow it worked thank you very much!!!
Thank you so much!!!! This helped a ton! You are amazing
So, catching up on this conversation as the instructions were fabulously clear – only one thing is missing in my brain to understand the whole process.
What do I do if I´m on Mac but my client is on PC? Do I format to exFAT? Does the USB stick then work on both Mac and PC?
I find it ridiculous that this is an issue this day and age!
Thanks,
Mi
thanks a lot man u rock ur awesome
thanks a lot..
I’m doing this so i can copy the file to a PC and you say that doing this will make it unreadable on PCs… so what do i do?
Thanks, helped me out!!!
YOU ARE A LIFESAVER!!! Thank you so much!!!!!
YOU’RE A LIFESAVER! Thank you SO much for this.
Thank you!!! You rock!
Thanks for the tip Dave, very helpful!
thanks a lot… buddy..!!
OMG! Worked like a charm! Thanks so much!
THANK YOU SO MUCH! GOD BLESS
That solved my problem. Thanks!
cheers dave
Thanks for solving my problem! Cheers, Darren Doherty
Amazing man thanks a lot!!
Mac never ceases to disappoint, cant believe i bought this thing…
Maybe you don’t have to reformat the flash drive, which I would avoid. You could go to trusty Softpedia.com and get HJSplit for Java (it’s freeware) at:
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Utilities/HJSplit-for-Java.shtml
(I’m not too fond of Java but…) Anyway, you can split the file into one piece of maybe 3.95GB, and another smaller one. Only drawback is you presumably won’t be able to open the file until you put it back together (on any platform).
Thanks for that note, Ken. I did more research and apparently there is support for NTFS within Mac OS X but it’s not stable and since it’s flaky Apple opted not to make it available for the general consumer. If you dig around on Facebook people have figured out some sneaky ways to enable it, though. Which still doesn’t mean you can use Disk Utility to reformat a thumb drive to work with NTFS, however. 🙂
[formatting NTFS] For reasons that are a bit hard to fathom, that’s not an option in Disk Utility on the Mac.
I don’t have a Mac, so I can’t verify this, but…
In helping a client move many gigs of files from his Windows box to his new Mac, he purchased an external USB drive. It was formatted NTFS, and included both Windows and Mac backup utilities. The manual included instructions for reformatted it for Mac OS (including the note to copy the Mac software off of it first), noting that, while the Mac could *read* NTFS, it couldn’t *write* to it.