[Windows Fix] “The File is Too Large for the Destination File System” Error Message
If you are getting “The file is too large for the destination file system” error message while copying files to your USB drive and want to know how to fix this error message, this tutorial will help you.
Table of Contents
PROBLEM SYMPTOM:
You are trying to copy or move a few files from your computer to your USB drive (pen drive) or external hard disk drive (HDD). During copying/moving, Windows shows following error message:
The file is too large for the destination file system.
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You get only “Cancel” button to terminate copying/moving operation.
Recently while copying Windows 10 setup files to one of my USB drives, I got this error message as shown in following screenshot:
Windows was unable to copy Install.wim file to my USB drive. The file size was 4.29 GB. My USB drive capacity was 32 GB and there was sufficient free space on the USB drive, still Windows was unable to copy the file and displayed file too large error message.
PROBLEM REASON:
This problem occurs when you try to copy or move a file larger than 4 GB to an external hard disk or USB flash drive which was formatted using FAT (also known as FAT16) or FAT32 file system.
FAT and FAT32 file systema have some limitations and you can’t store a file on FAT and FAT32 file systems which is larger than 2 GB and 4 GB in size respectively. Although you can copy data up to 2 TB on an external drive using FAT32 file system. But you can’t copy/move an individual file larger than 4 GB to FAT32 file system.
Since Windows detects file system of your USB drive is FAT32 and the file size is more than 4 GB, it stops the operation and throws file too large error message.
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PROBLEM SOLUTION:
The solution to fix this problem is simple. You need to change or convert file system of your USB drive or external hard disk to NTFS which supports individual file size up to 16 TB.
You can either format your USB drive to NTFS file system or convert it to NTFS file system. Formatting to NTFS file system will erase/delete all existing data on your USB drive. Converting your USB drive to NTFS will not delete existing data.
METHOD 1: Format to NTFS File System
This method will erase your USB drive and will delete all data. Take a backup of important data before formatting.
1. Open My Computer or This PC, right click on your USB drive icon and select Format option.
2. In the format dialog box, select “NTFS” option from File system drop-down box.
PS: You can also select “Default allocation size” option from Allocation unit size drop-down box.
3. Click on Start button given in the dialog box and wait for a few seconds.
It’ll format your USB drive to NTFS file system. Now you can copy or more files larger than 4 GB to your USB drive and Windows will never show file too large error message.
METHOD 2: Convert to NTFS File System
This method will not erase anything. It’ll only change the file system of your USB drive to NTFS.
1. Open Command Prompt as Administrator using any method given in following tutorial:
[Guide] Different Ways to Open Command Prompt as Administrator in Windows
2. Now run following command in Command Prompt:
convert X: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity
Where X: is the drive letter of your USB drive. Replace it with the correct drive letter.
For example, if your USB drive letter is G:, then you’ll need to run following command:
convert G: /fs:ntfs /nosecurity
Wait for some seconds and Windows will convert your USB drive file system to NTFS.
Now you can copy or move larger files to your USB drive and you’ll no longer receive file too large error message.
Also Check:
[Tip] Create Bootable USB Drive from Windows 10 ISO Using Official Tool
Good information, I always used diskpart command to format USB or drive in NTFS, FAT32 and exFAT, but needs to format for convertion of file system.
Is it possible to also convert file system(storage system) in diskpart without format?
Thanks for the tutorial, Sir VG …
Really appreciate this tutorial. Keep up the good work. I am pretty sure it will come in handy in the foreseeable future.
@Gaurav Sahare
Following should work:
Diskpart
X: /FS :NTFS
Where X: is the drive letter of your USB drive.
This doesn’t help my problem. I’m copying a 127KB file to a different folder, on the same drive, with currently has 478GB free. My only guess so far is that it’s really a file path issue, that the file path and file name combined, is too many characters long, or there’s an issue because I’ve created another drive reference to the same driver as a network path – so that I can refer to files using the same file path in a document I’m using. (e.g. Drive W: really refers to \\localhost\d$\another_folder – which is a folder on the D: drive).