Microsoft is planning to remove the 32GB size limit for FAT32 partitions in Windows 11. While FAT supports volumes up to 2TB, Windows has had a 32GB arbitrary limit in place for nearly 30 years.
“When formatting disks from the command line using the format command, we’ve increased the FAT32 size limit from 32GB to 2TB,” revealed the Windows team in a blog post on Thursday detailing the latest Windows 11 canary test build.
The limit is only being removed from the format command line right now, so the existing format dialog box will continue to have the FAT32 size limit unless Microsoft finally decides to update this Windows feature it has forgotten about for decades.
The 32GB limit was originally put in place during the development of Windows 95, more than 30 years ago. Former Windows developer Dave Plummer divulged earlier this year that he was responsible for the format dialog box that hasn’t been touched in decades, and he also picked the 32GB limit for FAT32.
“I also had to decide how much ‘cluster slack’ would be too much, and that wound up constraining the format size of a FAT volume to 32GB,” admitted Plummer in a post on X. “That limit was also an arbitrary choice that morning, and one that has stuck with us as a permanent side effect.”
Windows has long supported reading FAT32 partitions that are up to 2TB in size, but you haven’t been able to create one in the OS without a third-party tool until now. Hopefully Microsoft decides to update the format GUI in upcoming Windows 11 builds, to make it even easier for everyone to create full FAT32 partitions.
