Why your SD card won't let you transfer files bigger than 4GB, and how to fix it

Your SD card's file system might be stopping you from transferring large files, but there's an easy fix for that.

By Filipe Espósito Nov. 14, 2026 6:00 pm EST yarrbush/Shutterstock Add Engadget on Google: Google Discover

SD card capacities have grown by leaps and bounds since hitting the market in the early 2000s, and the best microSD cards now come in capacities from 128GB up to a massive 1TB. No matter how capacious your SD card, though, you may run into an unexpected limitation: it won't accept files larger than 4GB, even when there's enough space left.