using Ubuntu how do I create a folder more than 4.2GB
 

I am fairly new to Linux. Although I have been using it for a while, it was merely something that I tried occasionally when I was not bust doing whatever in windows.
I am now getting more and more "into it" and the more I use it the more I like it.
I am however stuck with an issue which is not a disaster if I don't sort out but is driving me to distraction.

The info you really need

I dual boot with windows 7 (2 separate internal drives)
I do my own backups with a bat file I created (just form data)
I copy this backup to an external drive once a month
I am trying to go into Linux (Ubuntu) and copy this same backup file to a folder there.

The problem is that whenever I create a folder to copy it to, it is only 4.2 GB and the backup is larger.

Any help would be gratefully accepted

I have some experience of writing code but after a recent illness I sometimes find it difficult to concentrate so I will apologise in advance if I ask stupid questions.

Thanks in advance

What? Directories don't have sizes. Where are you getting that it's "4.2 GB"?

Folders have no size as such, they are containers for other files, when you do a get info on a folder and get it's size that is really telling you the size of the files in side it, if you are having problems copying a a large file to start with make sure there is enough space on the external disk also remember that if you are comming from windows and you have your disk formated as FAT there is a file system limit to the file size of any individual file, 4G as I remember, so you may need to reformat the drive to somthing like ext(2/3/4).

seems like the destination drive you are trying to create a backup on is formatted in windows fat-32 filesystem.
formatting it into a linux filesystem (e.g. ext2) would allow higher capacity files:please show us the output of the mount command.

Is there an echo in here? :)

edited, nevermind.

drive information as requested
 

Hello all and thanks for super quick replies
The hard drive that has Linux on that I am trying to copy to is 480 GB It should be 500 I had problems when I set it up. I thought it fas formatted to EXT4 but I could be wrong. (mount info below) I should have explained that windows can not see this drive but I can see and copy from windows to this drive from Linux as Linux can see Windows drive. The files are all data that Linux seems to be able to read e.g. word docs, jpeg etc. and the backup is simply a folder containing each of these in separate folders e.f. d:\mytempbackup\documnts\(and all the word docs in this folder).
The size of the backup folder is 10.5 GB in total

paul@Paul:~$ mount
/dev/sdc5 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (rw)
none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755)
none on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880)
none on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
none on /run/user type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=104857600,mode=0755)
none on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw)
systemd on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,none,name=systemd)
gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/1000/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,user=paul)
/dev/sdc1 on /media/paul/9f27fb9d-35ba-4fb8-be5d-69df991c5897 type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=udisks2)

i assume sdc1 is where you are trying to write to. maybe the output of df -h (in [code] tags would be helpful).

what is the actual command you are trying to run and what is the error you are receiving ?

Not sure about the output you mention or to be more correct how do I get it. I have very very little use of the terminal and have only used it when following instructions so far.

I am not using a command as such just copy and paste but the I get message not enough space in folder and when I check in properties it says 4.2GB

Run "df -h" and post the output here in [code][/code] tags to preserve formatting.

Also, which drive are you trying to copy it to? What directory?

sorry for the confusion everyone, not sure exactly what happened as stated by suicidaleggroll directories don't have file sizes anyway I have just tried again (8th attempt!) and had no problem whatsoever.

so many many apologies as I said no idea what I was doing wrong (but that's not unusual these days)

Thanks again.

Do I just put solved here?

SOLVED

Ext4 tends to default to 4k block sizes which allows for 1TB sized FILES. Bear in mind that some applications are still only capable of dealing in files < 4.3GB (aka 2^32 bytes), so best not to exceed that in practice. Kind of hard with HD media and high resolution images these days. Mostly a 32 bit limit and legacy application limit. You can use split to break up a large file for transport over lesser filesystems.

You should be able to read ext4 in windows, but not by default, you'll need additional 3rd party software. Of course. Not that I would know, never done that and haven't willingly run windows for over a decade.

Thanks for reply and I know what you mean about windows. I hope that I will be able too ditch it for most (or all) things eventually but I am not going to be at that stage for a while yet.

just an update. I have spent at least 5 hours trying to recreate the problem and I can't. The only thing that I did that I realise wouldn't work was to try ad create a director in boot. but this was not the problem I had. If I do mahage to recreate it I will let you know

thanks