Hi.

I recently purchased a (secondhand) Pantone-brand 8gb USB flash drive. I purchased it for the express purpose of moving around large (typically 5.4 gb) files that are 1-hour-long recordings of high definition TV show broadcasts. While I can successfully fill the flash drive up to near capacity with a collection of smaller files (about 1.3 gb each), if I try to copy one of my giant 5.4 gb files to the drive, I get WXP balking that "the destination disk is full". I tried formatting the drive and that did nothing to alleviate the problem. Of course I also tried removing and remounting the flash drive, but to no avail.

I need to decide in the next few days whether to return this item for refund. Has anyone here ever experienced a snag like this?? Has anyone ideas how to work around this deplorable anomaly?? (NO, I don't want to split my files into segments 'cause that takes forever and adds lengthy tiresome steps at both source and destination PCs!) Could this be indicative of a defect in the device?? If I have to return this I would naturally try again with the 8gb size, since I only need 5.4 gb for one of my TV show files. I cannot imagine, for the life of me, that going to a higher capacity flash drive is called for!

Many thanks in advance for any insights contributed about this unfathomable difficulty.

Yo, I think I see what's going on with that now. I tried the device in my most up-to-date PC, which runs Vista, though it's a 32-bit machine still. It gives me a different more informative message when I try to copy the huge file to the flash drive; it tells me "the file is too large for the destination file system". So then I noticed that under this PC, I can format the flash drive into what's termed the "exFAT" filing system, and then the huge file goes on there okay! Unfortunately, none of my other 3 or 4 PCs seem to understand the new formatting scheme, only FAT32, so I cannot read or write in that scheme from 'ordinary' PCs!

The file size limit with a FAT 32 file system is 4 gb so that is why you where having that problem. Note that according to wikipedia you must have an update for XP to be able to use exFAT on XP (sp 2 or 3). There is no support for earlier systems.

Great! ..just what I was hoping

what is?

Um, just THANKS for the link, awkwardly worded. That update does the trick and my previously questionable flash drive is now of premium service. By "hoping" I credit myself for likely eventually getting around to looking in some obvious places for such a software enabler.