cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/9729797

I am needing to transfer a singular file of roughly 4.8GB from Linux Mint onto a thumb drive, so that I can transfer it to my Windows install on a separate partition on the same PC. However, it has repeatedly failed after 4.3GB, with an error message reading “Error splicing file: File too large”.

How do I fix this issue, or get around it? I need that file moved.

EDIT: This issue has been resolved. It was caused by the thumb drive being formatted as MSdos, reformatting it to exfat seems to have done the trick. Just used right-click “format” on linux mint, no need for console or booting up windows.

  • temeela [she/them]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    11 months ago

    Seems like your USB drive is formatted with a filesystem that doesn’t support large files like FAT32, if you are able to, try formatting into exFAT in Linux with:

    sudo mkfs.exfat -n LABEL /dev/YOURUSB
    

    or in Windows by right clicking on the USB and clicking format.

    • bluestarshield@lemmy.mlOP
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      11 months ago

      Alright, I’ve used your code, sudo mkfs.exfat -n LABEL /dev/sdb1

      but the console returns this

      exfatprogs version : 1.1.3
      open failed : /dev/sdb1, Device or resource busy
      
      exFAT format fail!
      

      what’s the problem here? I’ve cleared out all storage on the drive, and made sure that it isn’t opened in the file explorer, and it shouldn’t be reading/writing anything because it’s empty.

      thanks for the help btw

      • itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        11 months ago

        You must unmount the drive before formatting. And also know that formatting wipes the drive, so if there is anything on there you want to keep, back it up beforehand

        • 9point6@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          And triple check the device path, you don’t want to unceremoniously unmount and obliterate one of your non-system drives (shouldn’t be able to unmount your system drive)

          This may or may not be advice from learned experience

      • Nyfure@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        It not only has to be not ‘open’ in the explorer, but properly unmounted. Tools like mkfs dont do that for you, its just not their job. (and might be unwanted or stop your from making mistakes like accidentally overwriting the wrong drive)

        try umount /dev/USBDRIVE

        If that still complaints about Device or ressource busy, then something is still using it.
        Either try to close things that might be the culprit, reboot and try again or, if installed and you are compfortable, you can check which processes using lsof -D <path where drive is mounted to> (you can get that location using mount | grep <path to usb drive>)