virtualbox VDI

Which file system type is the partition to which you want to copy that 20GB file?

What is the output of

sudo fdisk -l

file system type is FAT 32

output of sudo fdisk -l

is

henry@polaris:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for henry:

Disk /dev/sda: 74.5 GiB, 80026361856 bytes, 156301488 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x40e6efb3

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 * 2048 147922943 147920896 70.5G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 147924990 156301311 8376322 4G 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 147924992 156301311 8376320 4G 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 930.9 GiB, 999501594624 bytes, 1952151552 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x000a636f

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1 2048 1952151551 1952149504 930.9G b W95 FAT32

henry@polaris:~$

FAT32 can only hold 4Gb files. This is the maximum file size of the file system.

Why are you using FAT32?

If you use something better, even Ext2, then you can hold larger files.

Thanks,

But my Laptop is ext4 it still wont copy into my Home folder

Oh, so it's copying to the system, not from that is the issue?

What folder are you coping to?

Thanks.
so you suggest i should format my hard drive to ext2. i have almost 700Gb of files in that hard drive.

Am copying into my Home Folder

Please provide the output of the commands

df -h
mount

that we can see the mount points of the partitions.
Can you please also provide the full text of the error message?

On which partition does the VDI file currently reside, and to which partition do you want to copy it?

Based on your output I would expect that it can only be stored on the file system of /dev/sda1, but not on /dev/sdb1. This .however, is somewhat contradictory to your text saying that you want to copy it from the external disk (which I assume is sdb1) to your home director (which I expect to be on sda1)

yes you are right am so sorry. i can copy to my Home Folder sdb1 but wont copy to my external hard drive. i think the file system is ntfs, just checked with gparted and disk utility

please kindly find output of

df -h
mount

henry@polaris:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 2.0G 0 2.0G 0% /dev
tmpfs 395M 6.3M 389M 2% /run
/dev/sda1 70G 53G 13G 81% /
tmpfs 2.0G 364K 2.0G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 2.0G 0 2.0G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
cgmfs 100K 0 100K 0% /run/cgmanager/fs
tmpfs 395M 44K 395M 1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdb1 299G 245G 54G 82% /media/henry/TRANSCEND1
/dev/sr1 443M 443M 0 100% /media/henry/WD SmartWare
/dev/sdc1 931G 807G 124G 87% /media/henry/CKL LIMITED1
henry@polaris:~$ mount
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,relatime,size=2010108k,nr_inodes=502527,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=404252k,mode=755)
/dev/sda1 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro,data=ordered)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
tmpfs on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)
tmpfs on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (rw,mode=755)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,xattr,release_agent=/lib/systemd/systemd-cgroups-agent,name=systemd)
pstore on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu,cpuacct type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpu,cpuacct)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpuset,clone_children)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/memory type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,memory)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/perf_event type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,perf_event,release_agent=/run/cgmanager/agents/cgm-release-agent.perf_event)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/devices type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,devices)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls,net_prio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,net_cls,net_prio)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/hugetlb type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,hugetlb,release_agent=/run/cgmanager/agents/cgm-release-agent.hugetlb)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,freezer)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,blkio)
systemd-1 on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=29,pgrp=1,timeout=300,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct)
mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,relatime)
hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs (rw,relatime)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,relatime)
cgmfs on /run/cgmanager/fs type tmpfs (rw,relatime,size=100k,mode=755)
tmpfs on /run/user/1000 type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=404252k,mode=700,uid=1000,gid=1000)
gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/1000/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000)
/dev/sdb1 on /media/henry/TRANSCEND1 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,default_permissions,allow_other,blksize=4096,uhelper=udisks2)
/dev/sr1 on /media/henry/WD SmartWare type udf (ro,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=77,iocharset=utf8,uhelper=udisks2)
/dev/sdc1 on /media/henry/CKL LIMITED1 type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,showexec,utf8,flush,errors=remount-ro,uhelper=udisks2)
henry@polaris:~$

Notice how it says 'vfat' in the lines relating to the USB drive (the ones with 'media' on them too. This means it is FAT32. The largest file a FAT32 filesystem can hold is 4Gb

It isn't NTFS

yes you are right, one of my hard drive is ntfs so sorry. the one am copying to is FAT32

The maximum file size for FAT32 is 4 GiB minus 1 (base 1024) which is 4,294,967,295 or approx. 4.3 GB (base 1000). This is in line with the error message that you got.

I see the following possibilities for you:
1. copy the file to a partition that is formatted with a file system that can hold larger files (ext2/3/4 or NTFS etc.)
or
2. reformat that FAT32 partition to such file system.

Thank you so much.

I formatted my Laptop. still have issue with my wi-fi. it would connect and browse after first installation, but when i copy my home folder, i can still connect but i cannot browse

i reformat the hard drive to Est2