When you copy lots of small files to a USB flash drive, you may have encountered a ‘Disk full’ message even if plenty of space is left. This is especially likely if the small files have long names.
USB flash drives are formatted using the FAT file system and due to the way how FAT file system works, the root directory has a fixed number of directory entries. Every file requires a directory entry, and files with long filenames take more than one. If a have lot of files in the root directory and all the directory entries get used up, you can’t add any more files and you get the ‘Disk full’ message even when there is plenty of disk space available.
Fortunately, the solution is simple. Store your files in subfolders. The number of directory entries in a subfolder is variable, increasing automatically as needed. But if your disk already shows the ‘disk full’ error, you can’t create a subfolder in a root directory. So move some files temporarily off the USB drive. Create a new folder on the USB drive and move all or most of the files into it. Once you’ve started doing this, you may choose to create other subfolders and organize your files by category. The bottom line is: stop dropping everything into the root directory. Now you’ll be able to take advantage of the full capacity of your USB drive. You could still see the ‘Disk full’ message, but only when your drive is really full, and of course, you know what to do then.
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