I recently downloaded a file from my seedbox to my home pc, the file was 4.5gb in size and was a single .mkv file. After that i did some research and apparently files over 4 Gb in size cannot run on the platform used for usb devices. It occured to me to try and rar the file and then transfer it but it still gave me the same message. Drive Full. The drive was not full, nor corrupt. What i dont understand is why i have transferred bigger rar files and had sucess. Is there a setting when convert to rar format that would help this situation. Any help would be appreciated.

platform used for USB devices? Ummm, it's not a platform, it's a file system - eg FAT32, NTFS

run on the usb stick? Ummmm, the mkv does not RUN, but rather the software etc that uses the mkv. Also, raring up the mkv (in a single file) will not make any savings in size (of any significance) as the file itself is already compressed.

How big is your USB stick? If it's 4Gb then no wonder you get a "Drive Full" message.

What is the file system on your USB stick? If it is FAT32, then there are limitations - the maximum size per file is 2Gb.

The usb stick is a 16Gb stick that had 12Gb remaining, I dont understand why i could copy a rared file of 6.5Gb onto the same usb that wouldn't let me download a
4.5Gb file that was not rared. They both were mkv files.

And my usb( a scandisk Cruzer) runs on FAT32.

like Aequi said
so i dont see how you were able to copy 6.5Gb on this flash drive
i have a WD essential portable hdd i put movies on and plug it into my 360 to watch movies on and i had to format it to fat32 and i cant copy anything over 2 gigs on it...I got avi, mp4 and mkv files on it

First - do me a favour - right click the USB drive and select properties - tell us what the File System is

Second - have long have you had this usb stick? have you ever had MORE than 4gb on it at any one time. I only ask because some USB sticks are fakes and report false sizes - not saying that yours is.

Third - IF the file system is Fat32, then it is impossible to put a 6.5gb file on. Perhaps the 6.5Gb rar you're talking about was split into several archives.

Fourth - maybe, in the past, your USB stick was NTFS, but has since been formatted to FAT32 - who knows

Do us a favour and tell us the file system of your stick - then we can either a) know the exact problem, or b) eliminate the obvious

:)

I suspect that your previous file had been rar'd into pieces smaller than the 2GB limit, so that no one piece was larger than the limit per file. The new one is maybe rar'd into 1 compressed file still being larger than the 2GB limit. Could this be?

As Aequi was already pointing out. He is correct in saying that you won't gain any significant file space, if any at all, by compressing video or music files (MP3,MP4,etc..) as those are generally already pretty well compressed, same goes jpeg as well.

Careful Aequi! Remember you are only allowed to have a good idea every 666'th post, you just had a good idea the other day, and you are getting dangerously close to one now!

I've made 744 posts (including this one) and only ever had the one good idea. If my comments in this thread make that two, then as long as I don't have another one until post 1333 and after - then my statement still holds true :)

Ha ha .. silly stonehenge ... thinking it has to be on the 666th actual post each time ... he he ... maybe I'll ask magnetron to turn him into a toaster ...

Sorry Nuggs, I must have been sooo tired (I've had a quick sleep now). I didn't see that you had told me that it was FAT32. My eyes must have glazed over that part, sorry.

Here's what you need to do

1. Copy all your data OFF your 16Gb usb stick
2. Leaving the usb stick plugged into your PC, open Device Manager (eg right click My Computer, properties, hardware tab, device manager)
3. Find the USB drive listed in your "disk drives", right click it and select properties
4. click the policies tab
5. check "optimize for performance" and OK it. now close out of device manager etc

6. Now you can right click your USB drive and select format, and now under the format options will be the choice to use NTFS

7. Copy back your data including your 6.5gb monsta :)

[quote name='stonehenge00' date='Sep 6 2010, 03:16 AM' post='1864090']
I suspect that your previous file had been rar'd into pieces smaller than the 2GB limit, so that no one piece was larger than the limit per file. The new one is maybe rar'd into 1 compressed file still being larger than the 2GB limit. Could this be?

Yes that is exactly how i was able to move the larger file. I thought at the time that when you rar a file it automatically broke it into smaller archives, however after this discussion i realize i had simply rar'd one large file. I really only have unrar'd files, i will have to brush up on that.

And in conclusion i reformatted the usb drive to NTFS and had no problems moving the file. Thanks Aequi, Stonehenge and anyone who helped.

You are very welcome, glad you got it sorted out.

Sorry to hear that Aequi used up one of his good idea allotments on this though.

Just to clarify; FAT32 maximum file size is 4 GiB minus 1 byte.

It should also be noted that because NTFS is a journaling file system (causes more writes to the drive) using this format on a flash drive will shorten its life. Most flash memory has a lifespan of about 100,000 writes. The other disadvantage of using NTFS on a flash drive is write caching, if you don't use "Safely Remove Hardware" and just pull your flash drive out it can become corrupted.

The best option to use is ExFat if your flash drive supports it, as it gets rid of the 4GiB limit without the disadvantages of NTFS.

Absolutely right. For some reason I had 2Gb in my head at the time of posting - did I say I was very tired? :) Sorry for the mistake and thanks azen for the correction :)

Edit: now quick, first person to tell me how many bytes in a YottaByte will get two free beers :)

A Yottabyte is A quadrillion gigabytes. Just to put it in perspective if a 1 Terabyte hard drive costs $100.00 it would cost you $100 trillion dollars to purchase a Yottabyte of storage. Throw in a cookie and I'll tell ya' how much physical space you would need to hold a Yottabyte's worth of hard drives, or what would the power consumption be worth?

Yes, all very good ... but the answer I wanted is 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 bytes. :)

Here's some more trivia

The ExFat (Fat64) file system i mentiones above can handle 16 exabyte files.

which is 16,000,000,000,000,000,000 Bytes or 16 Billion gigabytes, or 16 million terabytes.

That's a lot more than fat32 :P

All good to know. Thanks again for the advice and the trivia!