USB stick error

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Basically, I'm trying to copy a rather large .RAR file (it's almost 1GB) from my Windows XP PC to a brand new 2GB Kingston DataTraveler USB memory stick, and about a third of the way in, it's coming up with the error message "Cannot Copy *filename*.RAR. The parameter is incorrect"

Now, I ran a google search, and the only things I found were forum threads with long-winded and technical answers, and I'm not great at computers (I know how to defrag, I know what a driver is, how to uninstall and install them and suchlike, I know a fair bit of jargon, but I don't claim to be an expert), so ideally, if there is a solution, I'm going to need it in a simple, step-by-step form

Please help, I'm doing my nut in over this

test the memory stick by trying to save another single file of similar size to it. A folder with many files that equal 1g won't do because the computer breaks them up easier and saves them sequentially. Maybe try to make a zip file of similar size and see if it's the file type. If that doesn't work you probably won't be able to do it and can save yourself the aggravation of uncertainty. If it does work than either it is having trouble with the .rar file type, or the file is corrupt.

What kind of file gets compressed to 1g?

The error message you are getting makes utterly no sense. Still, that's nothing surprising, from Microsoft.

Several ideas:

Check your HDD for errors. Maybe the file has a bad cluster.

Try just copying the file to a new location on disk. If it fails, the file is somehow corrupt.

If you don't have the space to copy the file, boot off a Linux live CD and try copying the file to /dev/null (or, in fact, to the memory stick).

Install Cygwin and copy the file to /dev/null.

Check for errors on and/or reformat the memory stick, if it turns out that it's only causing the problem when that is the destination. Maybe it has got its allocation table screwed up.

Check that you have the latest drivers for the Kingston stick. I have one of them, and I know there seemed to be a few conflicting drivers knocking about. Plus, when I use it on a system that hasn't seen a Kingston before, XP seems to want a reboot after loading the drivers (pathetic).

PS

Q. What kind of file gets compressed to 1Gbyte?
A. A big file. (In my case, IIRC, a 7Gbyte XML file.)

Are You Running off USB 1.1 OR USB 2.0.

Also check for "odd" or illegal filename characters. You could rename it to X.RAR temporarily to make sure that's not an issue.

Can you see in the properties of the stick which filesystem it is currently formated with? Try to re-format with FAT32 (or, if you exclusively use it on modern Windows variants, try NTFS). I've seems vendors use odd variants of the FAT filesystem (like FAT16 with utterly large blocksizes) to get around some licensing issues. Of course, such odd FAT variants may give you the 2GB size, but with curios limitations like 300MB file size limits...

Well, if you would only work with the stick in a vendor-approved way - e.g. copying excel files and MP3's - you'd never noticed anyway

Why would that be a problem? I have a 1Gbyte Kingston that I use here, on USB 1.1, and have used on USB 2 elsewhere on the same stick/partitions/files. There's a minor difference in speed. Why would it cause a 1Gbyte transfer to stop 1/3rd of the way through the copy?


Again, why would that cause a problem 1/3rd of the way through the copy?

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PS. Above I mentioned "partitions". The stick is currently set up as a live/persistent Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (Tribe 5), which works rather well. The first partition contains the Ubuntu image, as FAT16, which is all wimpy Windows can handle, but means I can use the stick to copy things to/from Windows. The second partition is the "casper-rw" ext2 partition which is where all the persistent stuff goes (home directories, etc).