# unable to transfer large file to Fat32 HDD



## yodaddi (Jan 19, 2004)

i just purchased a Western Digital ext HDD that is Fat32. i would like to place a 5gb file in that Hdd so i can view it on my ps3. problem is i get a message saying that the file is too large when the Hdd is actually 640gb. PS3 won't recognize NTFS only Fat32. any suggestions? 

i'm running Windows Vista.


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

FAT32 supports a max file size of 4 GB's. It is an old, less stable file system. It really shouldn't be used at all these days. We have NTFS and Ext4fs.


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## yodaddi (Jan 19, 2004)

Elvandil said:


> FAT32 supports a max file size of 4 GB's. It is an old, less stable file system. It really shouldn't be used at all these days. We have NTFS and Ext4fs.


thx. i wanted to use this HDD for my ps3 but it uses Fat32. will Ext4fs work on ps3?


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

I don't beleive so.


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## Carnage.Kid (Mar 21, 2009)

Actually, MS doesn't support *making* FAT32 partitions larger than 4 GB. Linux will make them larger (much larger). MS will write to the larger partitions (and read from them. It just won't make them.


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## Carnage.Kid (Mar 21, 2009)

Does this HDD have more than one partition on it? Assuming the current data on the disk isn't critical and you can destroy it, you could use gparted (linux freeware) to repartition the drive with a partition larger than the size of your file. Then format that partition in FAT32 and write your file to it.


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## TheOutcaste (Aug 8, 2007)

Carnage.Kid said:


> Actually, MS doesn't support *making* FAT32 partitions larger than 4 GB.


Actually, the limit for Win2k and WinXP is 32 GiB. You can create larger partitions, but can't format them without 3rd party tools, or using fdisk and format from Win9x.
WinME is supposed to be able to create FAT32 partitions up to 2 TiB, but fdisk is limited to 512 GiB, so you have to use something else to partition the drive
Win98 can create FAT32 partitions up to 127.53 GiB

The maximum size of a FAT32 Volume is 8TiB using 32 KiB clusters.

His drive is already formatted, so that's not an issue.

The problem is FAT32 supports a max _file_ size of 4GiB-1 byte. No way around that.
Even on an 8 TiB FAT32 volume, you can't store a file larger than 4 GiB-1 byte.

@yodaddi The only option is to split the file into two pieces, then view/play each piece.

HTH

Jerry


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