"Error splicing file: File too large"

[Karl Auer]

On Sun, 2016-09-18 at 14:53 -0700, Dave Stevens wrote:
> perhaps I can clarify. The display didn't say 99%. Instead it was a
> file copy operation counting down from 67K files. It had got to 500-
> odd to go before crapping out. I don't necessarily think this meant
> it had actually finished copying that many files and in fact when I
> looked at the transferred file size after the crash it was about 4GB.

Whoa - that's a bit of new information! Would have been good to have
that nice clear explanation at the outset.

A FAT32 filesystem can accommodate only 65535 files in a single
directory (fewer if you use long file names). If all those 67K files
were going into a single directory, and it stopped copying at "99%"
there is a very good possibility that you hit this limit
(65535/67000*100 ~ 98%) You will need to use a different filesystem
format, or spread the files across at least two directories.

I'm not sure, but I seem to recall a limit of only 512 files in the
root directory, but that might be for FAT16.

If you mean "it transferred a total of 4GB then stopped", you have a
different problem, and the stick is defective or does not have the
capacity it advertises. With a FAT32 filesystem on a 16GB stick, you
should be able to copy up to around 16GB of data on to it.

If you mean "the file it stopped copying on was bigger than 4GB", then
the solution is, as discussed, to choose a filesystem format that
supports file sizes greater than 4GB in size (FAT32 doesn't).

If you mean "it stopped copying after about 14GB altogether" and you
have no files in the set that are greater than 4GB in size, then the
stick is too small when formatting and chunking (clustering) is taken
into account and you need a bigger stick.

To the person who said that there were variants of FAT32: Yes, there
are, and as far as I know none of them support file sizes greater than
4GB.

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://twitter.com/kauer389

GPG fingerprint: E00D 64ED 9C6A 8605 21E0 0ED0 EE64 2BEE CBCB C38B
Old fingerprint: 3C41 82BE A9E7 99A1 B931 5AE7 7638 0147 2C3C 2AC4