How to split a large file into several smaller files

Many thumb drives are formatted with FAT32, making the maximum file size just shy 4GB. If you need to copy a large file like this to a thumb drive, follow the instructions below.

Search for files too big to fit on your thumb drive

find ~/ -type f -size +4095M | xargs ls -lh

Split the large file into several smaller files on the thumb drive

split --bytes=4095m ~/largeFile /media/thumbDrive/largeFilePrefix

Put the smaller files back together as one large file on another computer

cat /media/thumbDrive/largeFilePrefix* > ~/largeFile

For Example:

split --bytes=4095m IE9.ova /media/MyPassport/VirtualBoxVMs/IE9.ova_