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 group in a weblog publish on Thursday detailing the newest Home windows 11 canary check construct.
The restrict is simply 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 characteristic it has forgotten about for many years.
The 32GB restrict was initially put in place throughout the growth of Home windows 95, greater than 30 years in the past. Former Home windows developer Dave Plummer divulged earlier this 12 months that he was chargeable 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 alternative that morning, and one which has caught with us as a everlasting facet impact.”
Home windows has lengthy supported studying FAT32 partitions which can be as much as 2TB in dimension, however you haven’t been capable of create one within the OS with out a third-party device 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.