Yes, why can't I?
I was stashing away some old photography backup zips last night. I could copy 4 of my > 1 GB backup zips to my external USB connected hard-drive when I got the error message "Cannot copy file. Not enough free space." (sort of) for a zip of roughly 7 GB.
But there are 120 GB free. Why is this?
EDIT: Clarification - the files that I could copy was smaller than 4 GB. The failing one was 7 GB. The cause seems to be the FAT32 4 GB limit.
Maybe your External HDD is formatted as FAT? FAT-formatted drives can't see files larger than 4 GB, you'll have to reformat it as NTFS.
The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GB minus 1 byte (232−1 bytes). Video applications, large databases, and some other software easily exceed this limit. Larger files require another formatting type such as NTFS.
Or you could split the zip file in two 3.5 GB parts.
Most likely the drive has been formatted with FAT32 which has a maximum file size of 4GB. See the Wikipedia article on FAT32
Format the drive with NTFS and it should be good to go.
I formatted my 8gb flash card to exFAT as I haven't NTFS option in "format" menu. But it works fine!
