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Thread ID: 126082	2012-08-05 21:13:00	32GB USB Flash Drive Help	pantera989 (14533)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1293117	2012-08-05 21:13:00	I have a 32GB USB flash drive, in windows explorer it shows 29.8GB free space, however when I try to copy a 6GB ZIP file onto the drive, a message pop's up saying there is not enough space on the drive. I have tried rebooting, and using different USB ports, both USB 2 and 3. Any help will be greatly appreciated.	pantera989 (14533)
1293118	2012-08-05 21:17:00	What format is it formatted into? FAT32 has a file limit size	gary67 (56)
1293119	2012-08-05 21:22:00	you can only copy up to 4GB to FAT32 all flash drives have this 4GB limit. make the file smaller	GameJunkie (72)
1293120	2012-08-05 21:28:00	Reformat the drive as exFAT, but make sure you back up everything on the drive first.	pcuser42 (130)
1293121	2012-08-05 21:29:00	You can either split it into mutliple smaller files or reformat the flash drive with either NTFS or exFAT. exFAT is theoretically better as it was designed for flash drives etc but it isn't as widely compatible - mainly windows 7 or Vista, XP can read it but requires an update installed. I use NTFS on my 32 GB flash drive personally for this reason.	dugimodo (138)
1293122	2012-08-05 22:00:00	exFAT is theoretically better as it was designed for flash drives etc but it isn't as widely compatible - mainly windows 7 or Vista, XP can read it but requires an update installed. Specifically, Windows XP with this hotfix (www.microsoft.com), Windows Vista SP1, Windows 7 (any version) and recent versions of OS X support exFAT.	pcuser42 (130)
1293123	2012-08-06 00:05:00	I wanted to try exFAT myself, formatted my flash drive with it and all seemed well. Until I took it to work, all our PC's use XP and don't have the hotfix and us mere users aren't allowed to install anything. So I just use NTFS, it works everywhere I use my flash drive and doesn't have the same limitations as FAT32. I'm also not sure if many devices such as media players etc support exFAT, although to be fair many of them don't support NTFS either. FAT, FAT16, FAT32 are the most compatible, followed by NTFS, then exFAT which hasn't been widely adopted as yet.	dugimodo (138)
1293124	2012-08-06 02:40:00	I'm also not sure if many devices such as media players etc support exFAT, although to be fair many of them don't support NTFS either. If it supports SDXC it should support exFAT :)	pcuser42 (130)
1293125	2012-08-06 07:18:00	I just use NTFS, it works everywhere I use my flash drive and doesn't have the same limitations as FAT32. I'm also not sure if many devices such as media players etc support exFAT, although to be fair many of them don't support NTFS either. Sliding off-topic a little, but still somewhat relevant, I just bought two 16GB 'Cruzer Edge' thumb drives to use for recording off a Loranz DVB-T Freeview Terrestrial set-top box. Surprisingly, the box can variously 'set a partition', format the drive as FAT32 or format as NTFS. I have no idea how much memory is needed to record a program or perhaps a movie, but maybe 4GB might be marginal. My questions here are these: Am I right to assume that the 4GB FAT limit is for one file, so you could theoretically expect to fit three not-quite 4GB files in there, allowing for the usual overheads? Secondly, I rather suspect that the USB output is expected to go to a hard drive, not USB sticks, so I presume I would be better off formatting to NTFS? Cheers Billy 8-{)	Billy T (70)
1293126	2012-08-07 00:45:00	@ Billy, yes the limit is per file so you can have mutliple smaller files no problem. The file system has no major advantage either way in this case except for NTFS being able to handle the larger file sizes. (FAT32 is marginally faster) I'd go for NTFS mainly in case long recordings exceed the 4GB limit, but I'd hope the device would be smart enough to work around that if it has an option to format FAT32 The biggest problem I've hear of from colleagues who record to flash drives in a similar fashion is that some drives are too slow to keep up with HD recordings, a lot of cheaper flash drives write as slow as 5-12MB/s.	dugimodo (138)
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