Topic by Chris 2013-08-05 22:42:53

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Hi.

So, I am attempting to copy a windows xp Virtual Machine file over to my mac using my external hard drive. However, if I attempt to copy the 28 gb file, it says windows cannot copy the file because there is not enough space on the disk. This is not true as both windows and my mac report that the disk has about 280 gigs free. So I thought I would erase the entire disk with disk utility. So, after backing up all the important data on the disk to my mac, I used disk utility to erase the entire disk. So, plugging it back into windows, I find there is nothing on the disk. HOwever, attempting to copy the 28.8 gb vmdk file to the disk gives the same message.
So, is there something wrong with my hard drive? I've also tried repair disk in disk utility but nothing seems to work. So, any advice on getting this way too big file over to my mac?

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Reply by camlorn 2013-08-06 00:38:38

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Well, share the file with windows file sharing, log the mac onto the share, and copy it that way.  Alternatively, troubleshoot your hard disk problem; if you're using fat or possibly even fat32, you may be over the size limit for a single file.
You can also compress it into a multi-part rar, copy as many rar parts onto the disk as can fit, copy them off at the other end, and then copy the rest.
I can't provide detailed directions; these are things I look up as needed, not something I waste valuable brain space on.

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Reply by Green Gables Fan 2013-08-06 01:22:42

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Hello,
I would set up an Ad Hoc network. But since you are using Wondows and Mac Iam not sure how this works. Setting up a computer to computer network helps for just a lot of things. It is much faster than dropbox.

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Reply by john 2013-08-06 01:28:10

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Similar to what's been said, but here's what I'd check:
Firstly, if you've got a fat file system on the disk (extremely unlikely), you might have a size issue with the file (though I thought that limit was 32 gb for fat32). Otherwise, you could either archive the file (I would recommend 7-zip for this myself), or you could share it over (though I have no clue how this would work from pc to mac).
Camlorn: fat/fat16 is only supported on disks of 4gb or less, and 4 gb's not supposed to work because it's 64k clusters. Even with fat32, you've got to have an old system to do the formatting, as newer windows won't let you format disks of more than 32gb as fat32.

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Reply by camlorn 2013-08-06 18:37:31

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I've seen odd things with windows disk formatting, and the system being used by Chriss was never posted.  Try formatting the disk with windows--if I recall, Macs don't do NTFS, and windows tends not to like other file formats.  To be quite honest, this is the old interoperability problem rearing its head: getting NTFS on Mac isn't the most straightforward thing (or wasn't last time I looked), but windows hates other filesystems.

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Reply by Sebby 2013-08-07 09:08:57

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FAT/FAT32 per-file size limit is 2GB. Solution is to either split up the file prior to copying (VMWare offers a vmdk format for precisely this purpose) or format NTFS and rely on OS X's read-only support to copy the file over.

You may find that Windows will not allow you to format an existing removable volume as NTFS (or anything other than ExFAT) if it has ever been FAT. This is intended as a safety mechanism for removable disks, but more often than not just gets in the way. If that happens, go into Device Manager, get properties for your USB drive, and allow write caching on the disk. Now you should have the option.

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