Computer science: file too big to open?

Self-tutoring about computer science: the tutor begins about files that become too big to open.

The following is according to my understanding.

I heard, in a recent investigation, that so much data was recovered, it’s very hard to sift through. One problem mentioned was that some of the files are too big to open. I wondered…how can that happen? I would have thought that an application would disallow the saving of a file too big for it to handle.

In the case of video production, it does seem possible that a recording can continue past the file limit of the storge device – notably if its format is fat32.

In the case of docx files, it seems that producing a file that is too big to open afterwards could be possible: the limitations suggest a maximum file size that can be opened in Word, but not, it seems, that can be saved.

It’s my impression that with dedicated software, or else command-line utilities available at the operating system level, docx files can be merged: one can imagine, by that method, producing a docx file too big to open is possible.

Therefore, it seems possible to produce a video or docx file too big to open. For uncorrupted files, tools exist to open larger files that a familiar application might struggle with.

Source:

learn.microsoft.com: Operating parameter limitations and specifications in Word

obsproject.com/forum: Videos corrupted if over 4GB in size

pandoc(1) – Linux man page