Portable Hard Drive cannot copy, transfer or store over 4 GB file sizes.
By: Revengsky Joseph D. Reyes (a.k.a rjdreyes)

Recently, I bought a 320 GB Buffalo MiniStation™ Stealth – HD-PCTU2 External Hard Drive, I know it was working because I tested it on the store. When I have to copy certain file, over 4 GB file sizes, I cannot store it or copy it to the External Hard Drive.

You may also encounter, messages like “cannot copy drive full“. The reason is that, other External Hard Drives like my 320 GB Buffalo MiniStation, are preformatted in FAT32, not NTFS.

FAT32 File System can only accommodate 4 GB file sizes of a certain file. If you have a file with certain file sizes of 3 GB or 3.5 GB, you can transfer it. But over 4GB file sizes, that’s another story to tell.

The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GiB minus 1 byte or 4 294 967 295 (2³²−1) bytes. Video applications, large databases, and some other software easily exceed this limit. Larger files require another filesystem. – Wikipedia : File Allocation Table

You can transfer or store over 4 GB file, if you used NTFS File system. Which means to say, you have to format first you’re Portable Hard Drive to NTFS before you can used it at maximum file size per certain file.

Another solution is to used WinRAR, Winzip, or 7-zip file archiver, to minimize to 4GB file sizes. You may either to split the 4GB file sizes into 2GB per file archive or whatever you choose. In doing this in takes couple of your time, instead your already backup or transfer your files in the External Hard Drive.

I hope, im able to help and clear the confusion. 🙂

Related References / Entries :
7-zip Official Site
WinRAR Official Site
WinZIP Official Site
Wikipedia – File Allocation Table – Official Site
Buffalo MiniStation™ Stealth – HD-PCTU2 External Hard Drive Official Site
How to Format a Hard Drive to NTFS on Windows by Jcyberinux