When I am trying to copy 9GB BAM files to the hard disk, the copied BAM file has only 4GB.What could be the issue?

Question

[bioinforesearchquestions]

Hello friends,

I have multiple BAM files in my server, each of them is 9GB file. When I am trying to copy them to the hard disk, the copied BAM file has only 4GB. I tried multiple times, what could be the issue?

When I opened the BAM file, I could see alignment only till chr8.

[Joe]

What filesystem is the hard drive you're using? Some of the older ones (I think FAT32) can only store 4GB files as a maximum. I'd check this first. If you're using NTFS (or OSX Journaled) you should be fine, and it'll be some other issue.

[bioinforesearchquestions]

Thanks, Jrj.healey.

To test this, I tried copying the BAM file to my local machine from the remote server. I could see the 9GB BAM file in my local machine :)

[Joe]

If you need a DOS filesystem compatible drive partition for some reason, the exFAT file system will enable both OSX and MS-DOS to read and write. I format most of my USB sticks with this so that I can connect it to any machine.

[bioinforesearchquestions]

Thanks, Jrj.healey. Just now, I did it.

[Devon Ryan]

Either a 32bit file system or you ran out of space.

[bioinforesearchquestions]

Thanks, Devon for your suggestions

Answer 1

[WouterDeCoster]

Are you working on a fat32 partition with a maximum of 4Gb? Reformatting to e.g. exFAT would fix this.

[bioinforesearchquestions]

Thanks WouterDecoster.

I have a Mac OS machine. I used both 128GB usb drive and 500GB hard disk, by default it has been formatted on MS-DOS (FAT32).

Now I get it. I forgot to reformat the new drive and disk.

[WouterDeCoster]

Alright, glad my first guess was right. For good measure I have moved my comment to an answer and added formatting, as such we can mark this question as solved.