Why am I getting "insufficient disk space" errors?

[JohnJSal]

Hi all. I'm trying to back up all the pictures on my phone's SD card onto my external HDD. I have about 42 GB of space on the HDD, and the pictures I'm moving are 21 GB. But every time I try to move them, it says there is insufficient disk space to do it.

Why does it say this? How can I fix it?

Thanks!

 

[beers]

Any 'weird' items on your external like formatting with a huge chunk size? That would suck up more space on disk per file and be exacerbated across thousands of files.

Otherwise without actually looking at it it's a shrug.

 

[JohnJSal]

Any 'weird' items on your external like formatting with a huge chunk size? That would suck up more space on disk per file and be exacerbated across thousands of files.

Otherwise without actually looking at it it's a shrug.

I'm not sure about "weird" items, but it's FAT32 if that affects anything. Here's a screenshot of the properties for it:

 

[JohnJSal]

Ack, now I'm trying to move the pictures from the phone to my SSD on my PC, and after a while I get this error:



I don't know what to do! I need to back these up!

 

[Couriant]

Out of interest, how long are the file names?

 

[JohnJSal]

Out of interest, how long are the file names?

Not too long. They are whatever the pictures are saved as when I take them with my phone. Just a bunch of numbers like 123456787_123456.jpg

 

[lucasbytegenius]

Are there any files larger than 4GB?

 

[JohnJSal]

Are there any files larger than 4GB?

Hmm, not sure. They are almost all pictures, probably some videos, but I keep my videos done with my phone fairly short, so I don't think any of them would get that big. Would that have stopped the whole transfer?

 

[lucasbytegenius]

I missed the part where you tried to use your SSD, which I'm sure is NTFS.

I think Windows shows a specific error listing the file size and something along the lines of "this file is too large for the destination filesystem", so it's possible the FAT32 file limit isn't at play here.

This looks more like the SD card is dying. What happens when you run a disk check? (Properties > Tools > Error Checking)

 

[JohnJSal]

I missed the part where you tried to use your SSD, which I'm sure is NTFS.

I think Windows shows a specific error listing the file size and something along the lines of "this file is too large for the destination filesystem", so it's possible the FAT32 file limit isn't at play here.

This looks more like the SD card is dying. What happens when you run a disk check? (Properties > Tools > Error Checking)

I've actually already removed the SD card and sent the phone back for trade-in, so I can't check that right now. I still have the SD card, of course, so at least it's backed up in that sense (and in Google Photos). I'll have to run a check on it when I get a chance and see what happens.