To my surprise, an error message appears saying that the file is too large for the volumes format.

This is a typical partitioning format that is supported by practically all computers (windows, linux and mac os).

FAT32 limits file sizes to 4GB and device sizes to 2TB (or 16 TB for 4 KB sectors).

For you to be able to store a file greater than 4GB in size, youd need to reformat the drive to either ExFAT (file size is limited to 16EB, or 16 BILLION TB) or a MacOS partition format (called HFS plus, file size limited to 8EB, or 8 BILLION TB).

Id recommend the MacOS partition format for its reliability, but only if youre working in a strictly Mac OS environment.

If you need to transfer files between computers of various OSs, Id recommend ExFAT.

Most USB drives ship with FAT32 formatting simply because its universally supported across platforms, but it has technical limitations for file sizes.

You can select this with the options button in Disk Utility.

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Mac Usb Drive Too Large For Format