Data capacity problem on flash drive

I have an 8gb flash drive that has NEVER EVER had any type of problem, issue, weirdness, whatever. It had just under 5gb of data on it, which I moved (temporarily) to the desktop 'cuz I have a 5.8gb file I want to put on the flash drive. So, all the data was moved off, I formatted the flash drive, it reports 7.46gb free, which is totally normal for an 8gb flash drive. I went to copy my 5.8gb file to the drive and I get a "Drive is full" error. So I tried copying about 1gb of data to the drive; no problem. I then copied another 6gb of data to the drive in smaller folders of 400mb to about 1.2gb each, and all those copied fine, and the drive reported that 7.1gb had been used, with about 400mb free. Again, normal. So, instead of formatting, I deleted the 7.1gb of data, and then the drive read 7.46gb was free (again). So I tried again to copy my 5.8gb file to the drive, and again I get "Drive is full". What the $%#@*&!!! Why can't I copy a 5.8gb compressed 7zip file to a flash drive with 7.46gb free? Why can I copy over 7gb of data to the drive as long as it's in a bunch of smaller folders? I didn't have an external hard drive handy (I normally travel with a 300gb WD Passport), but the flash drive should have done the job. The 7zip file is a compressed folder that was almost exactly 7.46gb, so I didn't try to copy the uncompressed folder because I assumed it wouldn't fit.

(this all took place on a PC running XP Pro SP3 that has never been the source of any problems)

 

I believe Fat32 will not accept a single file larger than 4gb.

You could use 7zip to split the archive into two pieces for transfer to the flash and put it back together on the target drive (not the flash drive).

Or format to something other than FAT32.

Edit: I realize the error message doesn't correspond to this idea but it may very well be the problem.

 

You could also try transferring to a sub-folder, instead of to the root folder. That has been known to get around this problem.

 

@ sach2: ya know, in the back of my brain I knew that FAT32 had some type of file size issue, but I thought it was 8gb or something, but I had totally forgotten about. I did try to format the drive to NTFS but the Windows format tool wouldn't let me choose anything except FAT32. I didn't have the time to try a 3rd party utility. I was also considering using 7zip to chop up the file in to a bunch of smaller files (like .001, .002, .003, etc), but, again, I didn't have the time last night to re-zip the file. I'm going to keep messing with it today since I have more time now, and I brought my 300gb external just in case. Thanks for the info!

@ GCWesq: interesting idea. I haven't heard of that 'work around', but I'll give it a shot. Thanks!

 

There is always the low tech The File Splitter that can quickly split a large file (even compressed) into two pieces which can be combined later. It is just a wrapper for an old DOS command for splitting files. Much faster than compression software that has to redo the compression even when you use Store mode.

 

Did you try this method to format it NTFS? http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/format-usb-ntfs/

May also try and go through disk manager to see if you have other options. I have XP sp3 at work and format my 16gb USB key NTFS every so often.