How to save a 5GB mkv file into thumb drive?

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I have a 5GB mkv file movie that I need to transfer from my mac to a 8GB thumb drive. But whenever I do so, the mac keeps prompting that the file is too big for the thumb drive's format. How can I get to transfer then?
 

chscag

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The thumb drive is formatted to FAT-32. FAT-32 has a single file size limit of 4 GB regardless of the total overall size of the drive. You need to reformat the drive to the Mac OS Extended Journaled File system and then the 5 GB file will copy to the drive.
 
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High and welcome to the forum. You might have too reformat the thumb drive.
If it has nothing else on it open Disk Utility via Applications>Utilities.
Now click on your thumb drive in the left column. Choose a Volume Format from the pop-up — use Mac OS extended (Journaled), and if you wish, give the thumb drive disk a name.
Now click on the erase tab. Once its done quit DU Open Finder, find your movie and then just drag it across to your thumb drive.
Hope that works for you

Cheers
 
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The thumb drive is formatted to FAT-32. FAT-32 has a single file size limit of 4 GB regardless of the total overall size of the drive.
Never picked that up until now. Thanks Charlie

Cheers
 
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The thumb drive is formatted to FAT-32. FAT-32 has a single file size limit of 4 GB regardless of the total overall size of the drive. You need to reformat the drive to the Mac OS Extended Journaled File system and then the 5 GB file will copy to the drive.

Thanks for the reply. How about if I want to play the movie on a Windows PC?
Can the reformatted drive be played there?
 
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As i believe you need to reformat the thumb drive into FAT-32 and you are stuck with the same problem. As chscag posted its limited to 4gb.
Have you got Handbrake where you might be able to get the file down to 4gb but might loose some quality ??
Just a suggestion
 
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Reformat the drive to NTFS, and use NTFS Mount on the Mac. That way you can drag the file onto the drive and watch it on either the PC or The Mac (provided you use NTFS Mount each time on the Mac.)
As it's free there should be no issue.
You can't format to NTFS using the Mac without 3rd party software, but use your PC to do it, and it will be fine.
 
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changing format to Mac OS (Journaled) Result...

I changed the format to Mac OS (Journaled) and it wouldn't play on my media player.
Any other ideas???
 

chscag

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What kind of media player? Windows? OS X? If the media player is Windows, the drive will have to be formatted as NTFS not HFS+.
 
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How to save a 5 GB mkv file into thumb drive...

I am answering the person who asked what kind of media player do I have.

MyGica is the name of the media player, and I solved the problem by formatting the thumb drive "X-Fat". I tested It and it played fine, and it is supposed to work with windows or mac computers, but not older models.

The other thing I tried (which also worked but took longer) was to make the mkv smaller by running it through Handbrake. The mkv was 8.21 GB. and the new file is an .m4v (Mpeg-4) which is now 2.28 GB.

Thanks for replying to me.;)
 

chscag

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That's correct. ExFat (not X-FAT) is only supported in recent Windows and Mac operating systems. As long as you got it to work..... :)
 

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