Error Code -1309, 2TB Elements External Drive

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for macOS
1

I’m having trouble on my macOS BigSur 11.3.1 downloading large files to my WD Elements external drive. The last information I’ve run across on this site is from 2011. It looks like those users were downloading drives from Apple specific to their software 10 years ago.

Is anyone having similar issues or could provide help in any way?

2

Perhaps the problem is with the formatting of the external storage device. Can you backup the existing data of the external drive to other storage media? If so, move your data out of the drive and try erasing the external hard drive again with Disk Utility.

Please do backup before running the erase operation.

3

Error Code -1309 means you are trying to copy a single file larger than 4GB onto a FAT32 drive. Was the file you attempted to download larger than 4GB? Your 2TB WD Elements drive is likely pre-formatted from the factory in FAT32 for Windows compatibility. While it can hold 2TB of total data, FAT32 has a limit of 4GB per individual file.

To fix this, you must change the drive’s format in Disk Utility. (Reformatting will erase the drive, so you had better copy any existing files to your Mac before starting.)

  1. Open Disk Utility (Press Cmd + Space, type “Disk Utility”, and hit Enter).
  2. Click the View icon in the top left and select Show All Devices.
  3. Select the top-level WD Elements drive from the left sidebar.
  4. Click the Erase button in the top toolbar.
  5. Set the options in the pop-up window:
    Name: Type a name for your drive.
    Format: Choose exFAT (if you use both Mac and Windows) or Mac OS Extended (Journaled) (if you only use Mac).
    Scheme: Choose GUID Partition Map.
  6. Click Erase to format the drive. Once finished, the drive will easily accept files of any size without triggering the error.
    This blog should also be helpful for you: MS-DOS (FAT) vs FAT32 vs exFAT vs Mac OS Extended (Journaled)