"Out of memory" when copying files

lx07 said:

No it doesn't. Nor do you need to increase size of your page file (virtual memory). If you think about it if Windows had to load everything into memory before it would work then it would be impossible to backup your system, stream a tv series or do anything.

Have a look at this - most likely the error message is wrong and your problem is permissions: Copying a file on Windows 8 gives even with plenty of memory and disk space - Super User

I checked the permissions on the destination drive and all boxes said "allow". Nothing looked like it was out of place or turned off.

PS. I don't know where my original post went, things like that happen when I'm on my tablet...

But my new computer has only 16 Gigabytes of high speed ram, I thought I could save a few bucks and I'm regretting it.

While 16 is fine for gaming I can feel the difference when working with my 3D animation projects.

So I did what I suggested myself and increased my virtual memory to 32,000 Megabytes.

I'm happy to report that I did see a noticable improvement in performance in memory intensive tasks at 4k resolutions.

I still may add another 16 Gigs of ram but this did help.

Mike

MikeHawthorne said:

PS. I don't know where my original post went, things like that happen when I'm on my tablet...

But my new computer has only 16 Gigabytes of high speed ram, I thought I could save a few bucks and I'm regretting it.

While 16 is fine for gaming I can feel the difference when working with my 3D animation projects.

So I did what I suggested myself and increased my virtual memory to 32,000 Megabytes.

I'm happy to report that I did see a noticable improvement in performance in memory intensive tasks at 4k resolutions.

I still may add another 16 Gigs of ram but this did help.

Mike

I upped the virtual memory to 32,000mb, tried to copy a 75gb file, "not enough memory to complete this operation".

Jezza819 said:

I upped the virtual memory to 32,000mb, tried to copy a 75gb file, "not enough memory to complete this operation".

Have you tried Freefilesync?

NavyLCDR said:

Have you tried Freefilesync?

Not yet. Looking at it's description it says it moves only the minimum amount of data necessary? I'm wanting to copy everything.

Would this program still work with this "not enough memory" error I'm getting.

If you are uncomfortable using drag and drop, try using the DOS copy command. For example, if you want to copy all the files from e:\myfolder to an existing c:\backup folder, open a DOS prompt and type "copy e:\myfolder\*.* c:\backup" and press Enter..

Ben

Ben Myers said:

If you are uncomfortable using drag and drop, try using the DOS copy command. For example, if you want to copy all the files from e:\myfolder to an existing c:\backup folder, open a DOS prompt and type "copy e:\myfolder\*.* c:\backup" and press Enter..

Ben

What's the difference between drag and drop and cut and paste? Drag and drop sounds more like you're wanting to move an entire file instead of just making a copy of that file on a new drive.

Jezza819 said:

I'm trying to copy files from a smaller external hard drive into a larger one. I first tried just highlighting the biggest file, selecting copy, going to the new drive and selecting paste. The copying process started but after a few minutes I got the error message "out of memory"...

Jezza819 said:

I upped the virtual memory to 32,000mb, tried to copy a 75gb file, "not enough memory to complete this operation".

Whatever the error message may say, it seems unlikely that lack of memory is at the root of your problems.

As a test I've just turned OFF virtual memory on a machine with just 4GB RAM. Then I successfully used File Explorer to copy and paste a 72GB file from one external usb HDD to another. Task Manager showed that throughout the copying no more than 45% of memory was in use, and Explorer itself was only using 65MB.


That message seems to be misreporting the actual error, something else must be stopping you copying.

Ben Myers said:

If you use a right-click, you should have the option to move, copy or cancel.

Ben

Using the right click is what I've been doing. Right click, copy, paste.