Fix: File is too large for the destination file system for Pen drive and USB storage Drive

  • last year
Fix: File is too large for the destination file system for Pen drive and USB storage Drive
Many times, we encounter with the situation when we are trying to copy something into the USB hard drive or Pen Drive, and you get this error in Windows 10 and Windows 11
The file "filename" is too large for the destination file system.
Here I have this 8 GB USB Stick with some data available in it. And when I am trying to copy this file which is in size of 4.60GB to my USB Stick, which still contains "5.30GB" free space. I get this error.!

The file size which I am trying to copy is of 4.60 GB and the free space available on my USB Stick is more than that. So, I should be able to copy this file into my USB Stick. Still, it says that the file is too large for the destination file system.

So let me tell you friends, you may encounter this issue due to the fact that, your USB disk was previously formatted with FAT32 file system, which allows you to copy the files only up to 4GB in size. And our file size is 4.60GB.

You can see the file system of your USB Disk by going into the Properties here.

So, to overcome this issue, we need to convert the file system on our USB to NTFS from FAT32. There are two ways. Directly format the drive selecting NTFS from the dropdown here, which will erase all your data from USB, or convert the file system from FAT32 to NTFS without losing the data through Command Line.

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