File is too large for destination file system - Already NTFS

4

This is my first SuperUser post, so please bear with me if I make any mistakes, thanks.

I have some large database files (4-7GB) that I need to transfer to an external hard drive (WD My Book, 6TB). However, when attempting to copy the files to the hard drive, I receive the error that says The file '[my filename]' is too large for the destination file system and have to abandon the copying process. This is very annoying because I am copying from a server across an internet connection, and the copying process runs for 4+ hours before I receive the error.

EDIT: Just for clarification/details, the error has shown for at least 5 different files attempted so far.

UPDATE: As suggested, I tried copying one of the large files to my internal hard drive. This also resulted in the same error message, and my internal hard drive is also NTFS. It would appear that the external hard drive is not causing the error.

The frustrating thing is that every help topic I can find says to convert the external hard drive's FAT32 system to NTFS, but my external hard drive is already an NTFS file system.

Why does my NTFS hard drive throw maximum file size errors, and what can I do?

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I am using Windows 7 Professional, 64-bit, 8GB RAM

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UPDATE: Per suggestions, I tried to copy the files using robocopy, but it failed for the large files both to the external drive and to my local machine. There is an error message:

ERROR 87 (0x00000057) Copying File [my filepath]\[my filename] The parameter is incorrect.

There were smaller files that successfully copied, but it failed at 90.3% of a 4.4GB file. The robocopy command that I used was as simple as I could make it (it's my first time using it):

robocopy "[my filepath] " "[my destination path] "

So, an example with the company path names changed: robocopy "J:\Top Folder\Sub Folder\Originating Folder " "\\Client\C$\Users\doejohn\Documents\Top Folder\Destination Folder "

It seems to be something related to 4GB; but, unless I'm just flat missing something, both the external drive and my local disk are NTFS (I right-click on the drive in Explorer and go to properties, the General tab shows information about used and free space, the file system says NTFS).

windows
external-hard-drive
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asked on Super User Mar 30, 2016 by elmer007 • edited Apr 11, 2016 by elmer007

4 Answers

2

So, after a lot more searching (I find it difficult to locate help for specific Citrix issues), I found a Citrix help page that actually describes my issue: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX134844. It is specifically a Citrix issue, unfortunately, and the page does not provide a solution.

As some of you noted, the magic cutoff size is 4GB, and this is just a limitation of the XenApp service we are using, regardless of the file systems in place-- the error message is not accurate.

In order to copy these large files, I believe that I will need to find some other service (like a cloud storage location) or gain physical access to the server and copy the files to an external drive there.

Thank you to everyone that helped me troubleshoot this frustrating and time-consuming problem!

answered on Super User Apr 18, 2016 by elmer007
1

First, try copying the file to your local machine like daniel.neumann said in the comments to make sure it is not a problem with the file or the network and if that works then use a program such as gparted (not sure if Windows has a built in tool for external disk formatting, Linux user here) to reformat your external as NTFS, after backing it up of course.

If that fails then there are several pieces of software that you can use to asses the health of your drive to see if there are any other problems with it.

answered on Super User Mar 30, 2016 by Kerr_Max
0

I had this problem too. And got finally to this post. To find an answer I hadn't hoped for. My external hard disk was NTFS from start. But I figured it couldn't hurt to try and reformat it again to NTFS. I did not expect it to work, but it did and now it accepts the bigger files too... Perhaps my experience might help even one other in the future.

answered on Super User Nov 3, 2020 by Gipsy
-1

I just had this exact issue and while the default format was NTFS, I reformatted to exFAT and then back to NTFS and it worked perfectly.

answered on Super User Jan 19, 2021 by Sarah

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