A file splitter that starts from the limit, not the piece count
Nobody needs a file in exactly five pieces. What you need is for each piece to clear a specific limit: the attachment cap on your mail account, the 4 GB ceiling on a FAT32 USB stick, the capacity of a blank disc. This app asks for that size and works out the number of pieces for you, so an 11 GB disk image headed for a FAT32 stick comes out as three parts.
It treats every file as raw bytes. Videos, ISO disk images, virtual machine disks, ZIP and 7z archives, database exports and backup files all split the same way, and nothing inside them is compressed, converted or opened. Every piece except the last is exactly the size you chose; the last holds the remainder.
The parts are written beside the original, numbered in order, such as video.mp4.00000.snipsplit, video.mp4.00001.snipsplit and so on. The original file is only read, never altered.
How to split a file into multiple files
The window is small and has one decision in it.
- Click Choose a file or drag one or more files onto the window.
- Under Pieces of, choose a size. The pane named What size the pieces are explains each choice.
- To use your own size, type any number from 1 to 99,999 and pick KB, MB or GB.
- Press Split. The summary reports how many files were split into how many pieces.
File too large for the destination file system? Split it to fit FAT32
Windows shows that error when you copy a file over 4 GB to a drive formatted as FAT32, which many USB sticks, SD cards, older external drives, car stereos and game consoles still use. Reformatting the drive as NTFS or exFAT fixes it, but erases what is on it and may not be readable by the device that needs it.
Splitting is the alternative that leaves the drive alone. Choose the 4 GB preset, which is set one byte under the FAT32 ceiling, and each piece copies without complaint. On the other side, drop the pieces back into the app to rebuild the original.
The same approach works for discs. The 700 MB preset fits a standard CD-R. The 4.7 GB preset is 4,700 binary megabytes, which is more than a single-layer DVD really holds, so for DVDs type a custom size of 4,400 MB instead and every piece will burn.
Getting past an email attachment size limit
Mail services cap attachments, commonly at 20 or 25 MB and at 10 MB on some older servers. The cap counts the message after encoding, which adds about a third, so a 25 MB piece will bounce off a 25 MB limit. Leave room: type a custom 18 MB for a 25 MB cap, 14 MB for a 20 MB cap, or use the 10 MB preset, then send the pieces as separate messages. The 100 MB preset suits upload forms that refuse anything larger, where no encoding overhead applies.
The recipient needs the complete set in one folder to rebuild the file. With this app, dropping in any one part is enough, because it gathers the rest of the set from the same folder. Without it, the pieces are plain slices with no header, so the standard copy /b command in Command Prompt joins them in number order.
Joining has no separate mode. When everything you drop is a part, the button changes from Split to Join, and the rebuilt file is identical to the original down to the last byte. A gap in the middle of the numbering is reported by name before anything is written.
