cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/9729797
I am needing to transfer a singular file of roughly 4.8GB from Linux Mint onto a thumb drive, so that I can transfer it to my Windows install on a separate partition on the same PC. However, it has repeatedly failed after 4.3GB, with an error message reading “Error splicing file: File too large”.
How do I fix this issue, or get around it? I need that file moved.
EDIT: This issue has been resolved. It was caused by the thumb drive being formatted as MSdos, reformatting it to exfat seems to have done the trick. Just used right-click “format” on linux mint, no need for console or booting up windows.
Seems like your USB drive is formatted with a filesystem that doesn’t support large files like FAT32, if you are able to, try formatting into exFAT in Linux with:
sudo mkfs.exfat -n LABEL /dev/YOURUSB
or in Windows by right clicking on the USB and clicking format.
Alright, I’ve used your code,
sudo mkfs.exfat -n LABEL /dev/sdb1
but the console returns this
exfatprogs version : 1.1.3 open failed : /dev/sdb1, Device or resource busy exFAT format fail!
what’s the problem here? I’ve cleared out all storage on the drive, and made sure that it isn’t opened in the file explorer, and it shouldn’t be reading/writing anything because it’s empty.
thanks for the help btw
You must unmount the drive before formatting. And also know that formatting wipes the drive, so if there is anything on there you want to keep, back it up beforehand
It not only has to be not ‘open’ in the explorer, but properly unmounted. Tools like mkfs dont do that for you, its just not their job. (and might be unwanted or stop your from making mistakes like accidentally overwriting the wrong drive)
try
umount /dev/USBDRIVE
If that still complaints about Device or ressource busy, then something is still using it.
Either try to close things that might be the culprit, reboot and try again or, if installed and you are compfortable, you can check which processes usinglsof -D <path where drive is mounted to>
(you can get that location usingmount | grep <path to usb drive>
)
exFAT filesystem is what you need, and FAT32 is what you have. Windows (natively) and Linux (via Terminal) both allow to format it and change filesystem. You can use GParted GUI on Linux for ease.
MacOS also supports exfat out of the box. So do most Android phones, TVs, consoles, etc.
It’s only viable choice for cross-platform use, AFAIK. Not the best fs out there by any means but I still use it on my all my USBs because I need them to work everywhere.
It is one of the best, while also being the most viable for cross platform use. While journaling types and the more niche Linux filesystems are better, they are quite exclusive. My external HDD and USB sticks are formatted as exFAT and it helps when I use them across both Linux and Windows on my computer.
Sounds like the drive is FAT32 formatted. Max file size then is 4GiB. Compress it with bzip2 or 7zip or try the @bartolomeo’s solution.