Windows 7 says a 8.6 GB file won't fit in 14.7 GB space?

The pictures below explains it well, but it seems Windows will not let me place a 8.16 GB .vhd file on a flash drive with 14.6 GB of free space.

Screenshot from Windows 7

windows-7

KDecker

Posted 2013-07-08T22:26:12.437

Reputation: 1 657

21Note that the error message explicitly mentions the file system and not the drive! – Bakuriu – 2013-07-09T08:09:50.340

In addition, it could be that the file has "holes" in it that have not been allocated yet -- this is often seen with disk images. Copying that file will yield a file without holes. This is not the problem at hand, but may come up in the future. – Simon Richter – 2013-07-09T10:28:40.093

Your file is of an illegal size on FAT32 formatted drives. The error message specifically mentions this fact. – Ramhound – 2013-07-10T21:17:36.753

@Ramhound I understand that now, thank you. Initially all I saw was the top of the dialog "File Too Large". – KDecker – 2013-07-10T21:24:14.630

Answers

110

It's formatted as FAT32. The largest size file supported on FAT32 is 4GB. You will have to reformat the drive as NTFS or ExFAT.

David Marshall

Posted 2013-07-08T22:26:12.437

Reputation: 6 698

The issue is that the target filesystem is FAT32, which only supports files up to 4 GB in size. The error message is not very clear if you've never run into this issue before. You can fill the 14.6 GB space with multiple 4 GB files, but no single file may be larger than 4 GB. You'd need to reformat the disk as NTFS or exFAT to support larger files.

Darth Android

Posted 2013-07-08T22:26:12.437

Reputation: 35 133

22Actually, the error message says it all: "The file is too large for the destination file system". – gronostaj – 2013-07-09T08:21:55.477

13It's still not a good error message as many users will not know the difference between the notions of partition, volume, file system, ... It's technically correct, but it pretty much only makes sense to those who know the FAT32 size limit anyways. – us2012 – 2013-07-09T11:36:36.993

4@us2012: That's a fair sight better than previous versions of Windows which would return a far more cryptic "access denied" generic error message. – afrazier – 2013-07-09T12:55:29.377

Microsoft should put a "What's this" thing on the dialog. Something that tells inexperienced users what is happening. Have they learned UX?

– Andrew Sun – 2013-07-10T01:22:40.133

@ascom yay for the Paperclip... Microsoft tried to do that, people hated it (or an extremely vocal group claimed to, making it appear as if there was general dislike across the user community) so Microsoft wisely decided to do away with such things. – jwenting – 2013-07-10T08:10:12.280

How about who don't know what a file system is check the Windows help file which explains the size limits for FAT32 partitions – Ramhound – 2013-07-10T21:19:20.510

In addition to David Marshall's answer, there's no need to reformat the drive. You can upgrade from FAT32 to NTFS with the convert command.

>convert /?
Converts a FAT volume to NTFS.

CONVERT volume /FS:NTFS [/V] [/CvtArea:filename] [/NoSecurity] [/X]


  volume      Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
              mount point, or volume name.
  /FS:NTFS    Specifies that the volume will be converted to NTFS.
  /V          Specifies that Convert will be run in verbose mode.
  /CvtArea:filename
              Specifies a contiguous file in the root directory
              that will be the place holder for NTFS system files.
  /NoSecurity Specifies that the security settings on the converted
              files and directories allow access by all users.
  /X          Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary.
              All open handles to the volume will not be valid.

Ben F

Posted 2013-07-08T22:26:12.437

Reputation: 333

6It's always a good idea to back up your files before using convert though - just in case something goes awry! – nhinkle – 2013-07-09T19:00:12.137

FAT-formatted drives can't see files larger than 4 GB; you'll have to reformat it as NTFS. You may have a directory that is 100 GB in size. However, no single file may be more than 4 GB.

The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GB minus 1 byte (232−1 bytes). Video applications, large databases, and some other software easily exceed this limit. Larger files require another formatting type such as NTFS.

Ref.: Wikipedia article on FAT32.

stderr

Posted 2013-07-08T22:26:12.437

Reputation: 9 300

3Cannot hold.. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen – 2013-07-09T22:17:29.737

FAT and FAT32 are not the samething the linked table is horrible – Ramhound – 2013-07-10T21:20:02.200