#FORMATTING USB THUMB DRIVES FOR BOTH MAC AND PC MAC OS X#
#FORMATTING USB THUMB DRIVES FOR BOTH MAC AND PC MOVIE#
#FORMATTING USB THUMB DRIVES FOR BOTH MAC AND PC FREE#
#FORMATTING USB THUMB DRIVES FOR BOTH MAC AND PC WINDOWS#

#FORMATTING USB THUMB DRIVES FOR BOTH MAC AND PC WINDOWS#

In dealing with this it occurred to me that Majid probably isnвЂ™t alone, and people might not be aware of the fact that you can format a USB key in Windows using one of three available file systems, and that each system has both advantages and limitations. He sent me a screenshot that clearly indicated the problem, as it read вЂњThe file is too large for the destination file system.вЂќ I replicated the issue quite easily by trying to move a 10GB file to a Fat32 disk, as Fat32 canвЂ™t handle any file larger than 4GB.ДЇAT32 has a 4GB file size limitation, making it tough to copy HD or 4K video footage.

#FORMATTING USB THUMB DRIVES FOR BOTH MAC AND PC MOVIE#

For reasons that are a bit hard to fathom, thatвЂ™s not an option in Disk Utility on the Mac.Majid was unable to copy a movie from his PC to his newly acquired 32GB USB key, and wondered why. If you want to retain Windows compatibility with the flash drive, you might need to format it on a Windows PC using the NTFS (Windows NT File System) format. IвЂ™ll confirm by copying my own 4.93GB file: Take another minute to quadruple check that youвЂ™ve picked the right device and click on вЂњEraseвЂ¦вЂќДЄbsolutely sure youвЂ™ve picked the correct device? Click on вЂњEraseвЂќ to proceedвЂ¦ДЄfter a few moments, it shouldnвЂ™t take too long, your USB thumb drive will reappear on the Desktop with its new name and you can now drag that 5GB file onto the device for safekeeping. Got the right unit? Click on the вЂњEraseвЂќ tab then pick вЂњMac OS Extended (Journaled)вЂќ - my recommendation for flash drive formats, though it does make it unreadable on a Windows PC - and enter a new name for the device if youвЂ™re so inspired: MS-DOS? Really? Well, itвЂ™s at least an early, relatively primitive file format from the Windows side of things, though I canвЂ™t imagine a single person still running MS-DOS on their computer! You can confirm by looking at all the stats at the bottom of the window. Picking the latter would be a complete disaster and youвЂ™d hate me forever. Take your time here and make sure that youвЂ™ve selected the flash drive, not your main hard drive. Launch it and youвЂ™ll see a list of all drives and devices hooked up to your system:Д«e careful here.

#FORMATTING USB THUMB DRIVES FOR BOTH MAC AND PC MAC OS X#

ThatвЂ™s done by finding the вЂњDisk UtilityвЂќ program thatвЂ™s included with Mac OS X in the вЂњUtilitiesвЂќ folder within the вЂњApplicationsвЂќ folder.

To fix it, weвЂ™re going to need to reformat the flash drive. HereвЂ™s the error message youвЂ™re probably seeing:ДЄs you can see, if you miss the last few words, you can be baffled how a file can be substantially smaller than the capacity of the thumb drive, but still fail to copy. Now back to the file too big for the FAT format problem. What? Empty your Trash and itвЂ™ll both empty whatever trashed files you have on the computer itself and the files youвЂ™ve dragged to the Trash from your USB flash drive too.

#FORMATTING USB THUMB DRIVES FOR BOTH MAC AND PC FREE#

You drag them all to the Trash, then check your free space. It works like this: You have an 8GB flash drive. So even if the flash drive has tons and tons of available space, the sad fact is that your file is too big for the file format.Д«ut thereвЂ™s another possibility that I see a lot of people trip over with flash drives too, even when the files are smaller than 4GB, that you havenвЂ™t emptied your trash yet.

A bit of digging reveals that the max filesize supported on the File Allocation Table (FAT) version of the Windows file system is 4GB. It actually says вЂњitem canвЂ™t be copied because it is too large for the volumeвЂ™s format.вЂќ That вЂњfor the volumeвЂ™s formatвЂќ is critical, because most vendors - Kingston included - ship flash drives with a default format of Windows (FAT). IвЂ™ve seen this error too and what youвЂ™re missing is the critical last few words of the error itself.

Formatting usb thumb drives for both mac and pc