Is It Possible to Copy Large Files to FAT32 without Formatting

Why Can’t Copy Large Files to FAT32 to USB Flash Drives

As you know, the disk capacity of hard drives is becoming larger and larger, among them, some USB flash drives have 8GB, 16GB or more disk space which can meets your needs for file storage. When you buy a new USB flash drive, you attempt to copy a file which is larger than 4GB to this device, however, it fails and Windows may give you a warning “There is not enough free space on the drive”. In fact, there are enough space on your drive. Why does this issue occur?

If you also meet such a problem, probably it is caused by this factor that your USB flash drive is in FAT32 file system by default. This file system has a limitation on the size of file, which means FAT32 only supports smaller than 4GB file. If you want to transfer file larger than 4GB to FAT32, it is impossible. Although there are much free sapce on FAT32 drive, single file size can’t exceed 4GB. Therefore, after knowing FAT32 4GB limit, what should you do to solve this problem?

How to Transfer File Larger Than 4GB to FAT32

In this case, the best way is to replace FAT32 file system on your flash drive with NTFS file system which breaks the limitation of 4GB file size and owns many other functions, such as file security and encryption, then you can successfully copy large files to FAT32. How to achieve this aim?

Most of you may choose to use Windows built-in Disk Management to format file system on USB flash drives to NTFS. But this way requires you delete all data on the drive, so it is not the best way for this work. How to convert FAT32 to NTFS without formatting drive? We highly recommend MiniTool Partition Wizard for a try. This partition manager is popular with you and it brings you much convenience to do the conversion between NTFS and FAT32. In order to avoid data loss and solve file copy issue for free, its Free Edition is suggested. Before you do, you need to download MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition and then install it on your computer for this work.

Step 1: Then please launch this free application. When entering into the main interface, right click the target flash drive and select “Convert FAT to NTFS”. Or select this feature from “Operations” in the left pane.

Step 2: Then MiniTool Partition Wizard will give you a warning “After you click Start button, the operation will be started instantly”. Pleas click “Start” to perform this conversion.

Step 3: After finishing converting to NTFS, please click “Close” and then exit MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Just do as the above guidance shows, then you can easily solve “copy large files to FAT32” issue.

In addition, in the future, if you also have this issue and receive “There is not enough free space on the hard drive. Delete one or more files to free disk space, and then try again” warning, please convert to NTFS right now with MiniTool Partition Wizard. Click here to know more information for this warning.