Microsoft is lifting a decades-old restriction on Windows that capped FAT32 disk formatting at 32GB. Instead, FAT32 formatting on Windows 11 will support partitions up to 2TB in size. The company is increasing the limits first in a beta version of Windows 11, specifically the Build 27686 preview release for the Canary channel.“When formatting disks from the command line using the format command, we’ve increased the FAT32 size limit from 32GB to 2TB,” the company wrote in a blog post about the beta release.The change should make it easier for users to format a USB drive or flash card while using the FAT32 system, which was first introduced in 1996 and has since become universal across Windows, Mac, and Linux computers, along with gaming consoles. Windows has long been able to read large FAT32-formatted disk drives. But due to an “arbitrary” programming decision that a Microsoft engineer made three decades ago, the OS has been restricted from creating FAT32 disk partitions beyond the 32GB limit. As a result, Windows users have had to use third-party tools to bypass the restriction.
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But now Microsoft is finally modernizing the OS to support FAT32 formatting to 2TB, which is the maximum size the file system standard can support. On the downside, it doesn’t look like Windows 11 disk management tool supports creating FAT32 disk partitions beyond 32GB. Instead, users will need to use the format command in the Windows command line prompt.
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One user on Twitter already tested the feature using the format command to create a FAT32 disk partition that’s bigger than 114GB. Despite the change, it’s important to note the FAT32 formatting still restricts individual file sizes to 4GB due to an inherent limitation to the file system.
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About Michael Kan
Senior Reporter
I’ve been with PCMag since October 2017, covering a wide range of topics, including consumer electronics, cybersecurity, social media, networking, and gaming. Prior to working at PCMag, I was a foreign correspondent in Beijing for over five years, covering the tech scene in Asia.
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