Microsoft is planning to take away the 32GB dimension restrict for FAT32 partitions in Home windows 11. Whereas FAT helps volumes as much as 2TB, Home windows has had a 32GB arbitrary restrict in place for almost 30 years.
“When formatting disks from the command line utilizing the format command, we’ve elevated the FAT32 dimension restrict from 32GB to 2TB,” revealed the Home windows crew in a weblog put up on Thursday detailing the most recent Home windows 11 Canary take a look at construct.
The restrict is barely being faraway from the format command line proper now, so the present format dialog field will proceed to have the FAT32 dimension restrict, until Microsoft lastly decides to replace this Home windows function it has forgotten about for many years.
The 32GB restrict was initially put in place in the course of the improvement of Home windows 95 greater than 30 years in the past. Former Home windows developer Dave Plummer divulged earlier this yr that he was liable for the format dialog field that hasn’t been touched in a long time, and he additionally picked the 32GB restrict for FAT32.
“I additionally needed to determine how a lot ‘cluster slack’ can be an excessive amount of, and that wound up constraining the format dimension of a FAT quantity to 32GB,” admitted Plummer in a post on X. “That restrict was additionally an arbitrary selection that morning, and one which has caught with us as a everlasting aspect impact.”
Home windows has lengthy supported studying FAT32 partitions which are as much as 2TB in dimension, however you haven’t been capable of create one within the OS with no third-party software till now. Hopefully Microsoft decides to replace the format GUI in upcoming Home windows 11 builds to make it even simpler for everybody to create full FAT32 partitions.
Whereas the partition restrict for FAT32 is being prolonged, there’s nonetheless a 4GB dimension restrict on particular person information saved on a FAT32 quantity. FAT32 isn’t extensively used as of late in comparison with options like exFAT, but it surely’s nonetheless in use by many older units that require USB drives or SD playing cards formatted with FAT32.
