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Why can't my USB drive accept a large file, as in bigger than 3.50 gb, when it is formatted in FAT32?

My drive is a (16 gb) drive, but when I tried to send an ISO file to it while it was formatted in FAT32, it didn't accept it and showed a message that the file was too large. I reformatted my usb in NTFS and sent the ISO file again. This time the file was transferred successfully.

So why didn't it work when it was formatted in FAT32?

James Dunn
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Ijlal Hussain
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  • This question should be reopened. I disagree that it is a duplicate. The sited "original" question is about how to get around the file size limit, whereas this one was more simply, "why couldn't I transfer the file?" (because there is a size limit). These questions are closely related, but not duplicates. – James Dunn Dec 21 '18 at 18:22

1 Answers1

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Look at here especially §FAT32

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. This limit is a consequence of the file length entry in the directory table and would also affect huge FAT16 partitions with a sufficient sector size.[1] Large video files, DVD images and databases often exceed this limit.

Toto
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  • Also, see this question for additional ways to get around the problem: https://superuser.com/questions/440509/getting-around-the-fat32-4gb-file-size-limit – James Dunn Dec 21 '18 at 18:23