Create multi volume archive on a Mac

I've got a 6 GB file, which needs to be copied to an USB-drive. The drive is 16 GB, but formatted in FAT so windows computers and Macs can read it. Fat limits the file size to 4 GB, so I cannot copy my file. My sollution would be to create a multi part archive, in two files of 3 GB.

How do I create a multi part archive on osx?

You can split any file with the split command:

split -b 2048m bigfile.tgz bigfile.tgz.

And you will get:

bigfile.tgz.aa
bigfile.tgz.ab
...

To combine them again:

cat bigfile.tgz.* > bigfile.tgz

It can also be used on Windows with copy /B

Of course, this is not really a multi-part archive, just cutting any file to pieces. Multi-part archives are usually aware that they are part nb 5 is a series, include CRC verification for each file etc. But that is specific to the archive format that you want to use.

Use programs like

• Keka (archiver for Mac OS X)
• WinZip Mac
• built-in Archiver in OS X plus Split & Concat / hjsplit for Windows, Linux, Macs.

To split with the internal zip command on OS X, type this in a terminal:

zip -s 1g BigFile6GB.zip BigFile6GB.iso

Where 1g = split files in 1GB of maximum size.

The result will be 6 files of 1GB each.

Read man zip on terminal to see others options of split size with the internal zip command.