There is a computer where I work that has a small system drive (C:\), with about 4.5gb of free space left. It has 2gb of RAM, and virtual memory is set to 2gb (init. & max.), all on a Windows XP machine (SP2).

There is a separate drive (H:\) that has 50+gb of free space, with a large file on it with a size of approximately 4.1gb, and some other files that are just a little under 4gb.

I have a USB drive plugged into it with about 100gb of free space.

I cannot copy the 4.1gb file from H: to the USB drive, but I am able to copy the files that are under 4gb, even if they're very close to 4gb in size. For the 4.1gb file, I get an exception saying that the file is too big to copy.

To the best of my understanding the copy functions used by copy and xcopy use buffered I/O, so I suspect that I'm running out of virtual memory to complete the copy or something. I'm not really sure.

I'm not able to test different virtual memory settings or anything because the computer is considered a treatment device (healthcare) and changing system settings can invalidate that status.

Can anyone tell me what's preventing the copy, at least what's 'probably' preventing it? Is there a way I can do an unbuffered copy to circumvent the system's shortcomings (would that even work)?

Thanks,
Mike :scatter:

What I would do is delete the Page File (virtual memory) from C: and "set" it on your H: drive. I don't see how that can invalidate any status, but should result in much better performance, and may fix your copy problem.

I tried temporarily changing over the virtual memory to H: instead of C:. I was limited on how much time I had so I only had time to try out one configuration.

I set the virtual memory on H: to be the same as it was on C:, 2gb (both init. and max.). Then I set the C: drive to have no paging file, rebooted, and tried the copy all over again, with the same results. It gave me the same error message that the file was too big and asked if I wanted to run disk cleanup.

Should I have set the virtual memory larger than 2gb? By having 2gb max. virtual memory and 2gb of RAM, am I setting some sort of hard limit on the size of files I can copy? (to the best of knowledge it wouldn't, but better to ask)

When you say to delete the page file on C:, do I need to actually navigate to the location of the file and delete it? I had just set C: to have no paging file.

Thanks for your help,
Mike

By setting the page to none on C:, that frees up that space - no need to actually delete the PF.

You should not have to increase the PF - in fact, 2Gb is huge already. It is not like the entire file must be loaded into memory first, then copied - it does not work that way. The OS should simply take chunks at a time.

By chance, how is the USB drive formatted? If FAT32, there is a 4Gb file size limit and it will have to be reformatted to NTFS or converted to NTFS using the command:

convert X: /fs:ntfs (replace X: with correct drive letter)

That looks like the ticket.

The USB drive is FAT32. I never knew about the 4gb limit.

Thank you very much for your help. =)

Got my files.

Thanks again!

Glad to see you got your files. Thanks for the followup.

BTW, that 32-bit 4Gb limit gets a lot of folks. It comes from simple math: 2^32 (2 to the power of 32) = 4,294,967,296 = 4Gb (where 1K = 1024).

NTFS has been around for some time so the FAT32 limit is becoming less common. But with the price of RAM going down, more and more folks are looking to max-out their systems with RAM. Unfortunately, all 32-bit operating systems (including Linux) have the same restriction . Therefore, folks looking to install 12 and 16GB of RAM had better be running 64-bit systems. Actually, in a 32-bit system, because of the way RAM is addressed, even with 4Gb installed, you will only see a little over 3Gb.