Sure, this may seem simple to many tech-guys and gals, but that does not mean we can't all use a little refresher now and then. I for one needed to be reminded how antiquated the FAT32 file system is in 2010.

A coworker came to me today with an issue coping several files he had created on his Macbook Pro onto his external 1TB hard drive. The files ranged in size from 7.8 GB, down to 3.5GB

When my coworker attempted to move one of the files, he was presented with the following message:

.

He was stumped, and came to me for help. At first, I thought it may just have been a permission issue, since that always seems to be the likely culprit in our office. But a little digging, it became obvious that permissions were not the issue. I then went alpha-geek on the problem, dropped to the Terminal, threw in some Unix code, and forced the system to start copying the file to the external drive.

8 minutes later, the Terminal reports back that the file is too big. Coworker: WHAT? There is 300GB on this drive. Me: Ooohhhh.... see, the file got to 4GB and then crapped out. Let me check something.

So I popped up Disk Utility, and checked the partition on the external HD. Sure enough, the 1TB drive was formatted in FAT32. Seems a bit short-sighted on the part of the manufacturer to send out a ginormous drive that has a 4GB file size limit.

I explained the issue to my coworker, and gave him his options. 1. You can burn these files to a Dual Layer DVD to get them off your hard drive. or 2. You can take all 700GB of your data off the external drive, re-format it to HFS or the Mac OS Extended. There is no easy way to do it since your drive came to you in FAT32, and you loaded it up.

My tip to everyone out there doing any sort of video work, or handling very large files. When you get that shiny new backup drive, or USB Thumb drive, before you load your first file on it, pop it in, and reformat it to one of the more modern file systems, you will be glad you did down the road.