# problem copying files bigger than 4 GB



## yanni.czelig (Jun 22, 2008)

I'm trying to backup two .iso files (5.33GB and 5.05GB respectively)
from my MacbookPro running Leopard 10.5.2 on to a Westgate external USB drive. When I try to do that it gives me "error code 0" and it fails to create a copy or transfer the file.

Is there a limit on how big files can I transfer through the mac? Is there a
way to get around this?

I've tried split, but then how do I concatenate the split files together to get the original? I tried "cat" on .bz2 files and I can't get to replicate the correct original to (when I unzip it the unzipping process stops midway with an error).  

I was able to concatenate 2 out of 3 parts of the 5.33GB files and the .iso opens up on diskmount but then when I try to concatenate the 3rd part 
it compains that the file is too big. So I'm stuck

"Concat" is not recognized by my Mac.

Any help?


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## ElDiabloConCaca (Jun 22, 2008)

More than likely, your external drive is formatted as FAT32.  The FAT32 format has a 4GB file size limitation.  There's no way around it.

You can re-format your external drive to the HFS+ (Mac OS Extended) format, which is more Mac-friendly, and does not have the 4GB file size limit.



> "Concat" is not recognized by my Mac.


If you're using the Terminal, the command you're looking for is "cat".


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## yanni.czelig (Sep 9, 2008)

I'm posting this in case someone reads the thread.

Reformatting to a more mac friendly system would be the solution. 
Without reformatting the way it worked for me was to connect with
localhost to another computer (on which I connected the external hard drive with the FAT32 file system) on my network and used SFTP, which seems to
be a file transfer protocol with no limit on the size of files sent.

Thanks for the replies.


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## VirtualTracy (Sep 9, 2008)

yanni.czelig said:


> I'm posting this in case someone reads the thread.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Thanks for posting your solution, yanni.czelig


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