Microsoft fixed an old “bug” (at least for those paying attention to disk formatting) earlier this week. With him the latest Windows 11 Insider Canary Preview Build (through The Verge), the company increased the maximum FAT32 partition size limit from 32 GB to 2 TB when using the command line. The increase comes after 28 years from the previous limit, which its creator thought would be limited to the lifetime of Windows NT 4.0.
FAT32 is not widely used today. Even SD cardsthe last holdout, mostly switched to exFAT. (FAT32 has other limitations for the modern world, such as a 4GB file size limit.) The move appears to be more of a tweak than a practical change—it’s tantamount to pardoning a century-old figure of Windows genius. will affect people today. The fact that the Windows GUI partition tool still has a 32GB partition cap makes it less likely that many will find much. material benefits from movement.
a 2021 videos On Dave’s Garage YouTube channel, retired Microsoft systems engineer Dave Plummer explained why he chose the 32GB partition cover. When he chose the “rainy Tuesday morning” limit in the mid-90s, he thought it would have a very short life and see an increase in the next revision. “I chose the 32GB number as the limit and went about my day,” he said. “I didn’t regret that choice until many years later when SD cards reached the magical 32GB size.”
Plummer went on to debunk the myth that Microsoft imposed the 32GB limit to encourage the company’s adoption of the NTFS format. He explained that NTFS was already widely adopted and, as far as he knew, Microsoft had never promoted it or made a dime from licensing it. Instead, he said, FAT32’s artificial cap was more to prevent wasteful dumping (especially with small files) than to implement any nefarious corporate strategies.
If you indeed Wanting to stay out of ’90s disc formats, Plummer’s three-year-old video goes into more detail about his arbitrary decision — unbeknownst to him at the time — that would last nearly 30 years.
