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Here's my Python version info:
Python 2.6.5 (r265:79096, Mar 19 2010, 18:02:59) [MSC v.1500 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32
Here's my code that won't return (Start with a file > 4GB "hugefile.bin"):
siz = (1<<32)
print "making array (%d) bytes" % siz
fin = open("hugefile.bin","rb")
a = array.array("B")
a.fromfile(fin, siz)
fin.close()
print "writing array (%d) bytes" % siz
fout = open("foo.bin","wb")
a.tofile(fout)
print "wrote 2^32 bytes with array.tofile"
I never get the third print statement :(

Looks like the issue is Microsoft's fwrite

This seems to be related: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vcgeneral/thread/7c913001-227e-439b-bf07-54369ba07994 

NumPy is addressing this with a workaround in its ndarray, calling fwrite multiple times in reasonably sized chunks. See http://projects.scipy.org/numpy/ticket/1660 

It turns out this isn't just a problem with array.array. It's a problem with Python's file.write() as well. Here's my test code:
# file.write() test:
FOURGBMINUS = 2**32 - 16
s = '0123456789012345' # 16 bytes
longs = ''.join([s for i in xrange(FOURGBMINUS//len(s))])
assert len(longs) == FOURGBMINUS
f = open('test.txt', 'w')
f.write(longs) # completes successfully
f.close()
FOURGB = 2**32
s = '0123456789012345' # 16 bytes
longs = ''.join([s for i in xrange(FOURGB//len(s))])
assert len(longs) == FOURGB
f = open('test.txt', 'w')
f.write(longs) # hangs with 100% CPU, file is 0 bytes
f.close()
SIXGB = 2**32 + 2**31
s = '0123456789012345' # 16 bytes
longs = ''.join([s for i in xrange(SIXGB//len(s))])
assert len(longs) == SIXGB
f = open('test.txt', 'w')
f.write(longs) # hangs with 100% CPU, file is 2**31 bytes
f.close()
# file.read test:
TWOGB = 2**31
TWOGBPLUS = TWOGB + 16
s = '0123456789012345' # 16 bytes
longs = ''.join([s for i in xrange(TWOGBPLUS//len(s))])
assert len(longs) == TWOGBPLUS
f = open('test.txt', 'w')
f.write(longs) # completes successfully
f.close()
f = open('test.txt', 'r')
longs = f.read() # works, but takes >30 min, memory usage keeps jumping around
f.close()
del longs
# maybe f.read() reads 1 char at a time til it hits EOL. try this instead:
f = open('test.txt', 'r')
longs = f.read(TWOGBPLUS) # OverflowError: long int too large to convert to int
longs = f.read(TWOGB) # OverflowError: long int too large to convert to int
longs = f.read(TWOGB - 1) # works, takes only seconds
f.close()
So, I guess in windows (I've only tested in 64-bit Windows 7, Python 2.6.6 amd64), file.write() should call fwrite multiple times in chunks no greater than 2**31 bytes or so. Also, calling f.read(nbytes) where nbytes >= 2**31 raises "OverflowError: long int too large to convert to int". I don't have either of these problems in 64-bit Linux (Ubuntu 10.10) on the same machine (i7, 12GB).

I suppose someone should confirm this problem on Py > 2.6?

It's still an issue with 2.7, and even with 3.2a2, see issue9611.

r87722 should fix the issue, but I didn't tested the fix... see #9611 for more information.

This issue is a duplicate of #9611.