New Time Capsule won't permit files over 4GB

[rogersmj]

I bought myself a new Airport Time Capsule (2TB) in an attempt to both upgrade my wifi, make backups easier, and consolidate some network drives.

The wifi is great, and backups happen effortlessly without having USB drives hanging off every machine, but I'm having a problem using it as a shared drive: it won't take files over 4GB. I was trying to stash some big files up there so I can rid of my ancient and increasingly unreliable NAS, and the copy keeps failing, saying "The item <filename> can't be copied because it is too large for the volume's format." This only seems to occur when the file is over 4GB.

Why would that be? That drive inside the TC should be formatted as Mac Extended Journaled, which should have no problem with big files, right? I'm having terrifying flashbacks to Windows/FAT32 days. I've Googled around but the only references to a 4GB limit on the Time Capsule are coming from Windows users using Windows backup software, and I'm not a Windows user.

Any ideas?

 

[GGJstudios]

Why not simply check to see how the TC is formatted? It sounds like it's FAT32.

You may want to verify the disk. How to verify or erase an AirPort Time Capsule disk

 

[rogersmj]

Why not simply check to see how the TC is formatted? It sounds like it's FAT32.

And how do you do that? I already poked through the Airport Utility, there's no indication as to what format the disk is in, even when you go to erase it. I'd love to verify the format for sure...but I'd be blown away if Apple actually shipped a product with a FAT32 drive. Secondly, I've seen references to other people putting 4GB+ files on their time capsules without issue (in those articles I ran across about Windows utilities for backing up to the Time Capsule).

 

[priitv8]

What protocol are you using to connect to TC? SMB or AFP??
I'd be surprised if the disk inside was anything other than HFS+.

 

[Weaselboy]

And how do you do that? I already poked through the Airport Utility, there's no indication as to what format the disk is in, even when you go to erase it. I'd love to verify the format for sure...but I'd be blown away if Apple actually shipped a product with a FAT32 drive. Secondly, I've seen references to other people putting 4GB+ files on their time capsules without issue (in those articles I ran across about Windows utilities for backing up to the Time Capsule).

The only way to format the drive inside the TC is with Airport Utility and it will by default format it to HFS+. There are no options there to format it to anything else, so you could not have done anything wrong.

I use my TC for the same thing and I currently have a 5.7GB disk image on the drive and it copied over with no problems, so a TC drive will definitely accept files larger than 4GB.

The only thing I can think of is to try and reformat the TC drive and try again.

Are you using the TC form Time Machine backups and if so, is that working okay?

Are you just dragging the file over to the TC in Finder?

 

[rogersmj]

The only thing I can think of is to try and reformat the TC drive and try again.

I just did that and it's working now, has no problem with a 5.xGB disk image...guess I should have tried formatting it from the get-go. Didn't think it would be necessary though since this thing is brand new out of the box.

Are you just dragging the file over to the TC in Finder?

Yep, that's all I was doing. Still a mystery as to why it wouldn't work at first. Initially I had been trying to copy the files directly from my NAS (mounted via SMB) in one Finder window over to the TC in another, but as part of my troubleshooting I took the NAS out of the equation and most recently was just attempting copies from my iMac's internal drive.

 

[Weaselboy]

I just did that and it's working now, has no problem with a 5.xGB disk image...guess I should have tried formatting it from the get-go. Didn't think it would be necessary though since this thing is brand new out of the box.

Glad that fixed it. I agree, one would not think a format would be needed. I always do mine just because it makes me feel better.