This is likely due to the external HDD being formatted with the FAT32 filesystem. FAT32 limits individual file sizes to 4GB. If you do not need to mount your drive on Windows, you could use HFS+. For maximum compatibility, you may want to look into formatting
your external HDD with the exFAT file system.
exFAT
The exFAT file system eliminates the two major deficiencies of FAT32: the largest partition and file sizes it supports are virtually unlimited by todays standards. Awesome, its perfect! Almost since exFAT is fairly new, it isnt compatible with older
Macs and PCs. Any Mac running 10.6.5 (Snow Leopard) or 10.7 (Lion) supports exFAT, while PCs running Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP1, and Windows 7 are compatible. If you know youll be using computers running updated versions of these operating systems,
exFAT is the clear best choice.
Format a drive using Disk Utility on a Mac
- Launch Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities).
- Select your external hard drive or USB flash drive from the list on the left.
- Click on the Erase tab. Select the format Mac OS Extended (HFS+), MS-DOS (FAT32), or exFAT then name the drive.
- Click the Erase button and the drive will start formatting. Be aware that formatting a drive deletes all of the files on it, so back up anything important before completing this step.
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Edited by
Garrett Dumas
Thursday, July 10, 2014 5:26 PM
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Marked as answer by
Dr. Vyas
Friday, July 11, 2014 4:16 AM