Microsoft Removes FAT32 Partition Size Limit in Windows 11 (bleepingcomputer.com) 77
Microsoft has removed an arbitrary 32GB size limit for FAT32 partitions in the latest Windows 11 Canary build, now allowing for a maximum size of 2TB. The change, implemented in Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27686, allows users to create larger FAT32 partitions using the command-line format tool. Previously, Windows systems could read larger FAT32 file systems created on other platforms or through alternative methods, but were limited to creating 32GB partitions natively.
Helpful for SD Cards (Score:3)
Many SD Cards suffered from this limitation when formatted with FAT32.
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Most SD cards come pre formatted, so its only a problem if you needed to reformat them
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Do they come preformatted with FAT32 or ExFAT?
I am using quite a few SD Cards and USB sticks, and I had to reformat some of them as FAT32 for devices which only support FAT32 (3D printers, embedded devices, some media players, etc).
Re: Helpful for SD Cards (Score:2)
Devices :(. I have a pretty decent 1TB USB that I recently put a bootable macOS APFS partition on so I could try out OCLP and see how well newer versions of macOS work on older hardware. I also put a large ExFAT partition on there for sharing files. I put the stick in the printer at the office and scanned some documents to it. Where did it put them? The f****** EFI partition! This is hidden and deliberately difficult to mount on both Windows and macOS. WTF?
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Whenever I get a new SD card I always full-format it anyway (under Linux). For many reasons, including security, better whole-disk image compression later, removing any doubt that they tested the whole device and also that their filesystem doesn't have something off about it.
It's also funny how doing that usually gives you slightly more storage space than what it came from the factory with.
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https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/f... [pcmag.com]
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only if your camera supports exFAT, not all do.
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Technically, maybe, but Microsoft tried to use it as a revenue stream by making it proprietary with required license fees or be sued.
In 2019, things improved a *bit* as exFAT became open source, and patent rights granted to members of the OIN, but if you aren't in OIN you still need a license/might get sued if you implement exFAT.
FAT32 for vendors is just plain easier, no fretting about the particulars of patent on exfat.
Things will get plainly easy for the ecosystem starting in 2027 when the patents expire
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Things will get plainly easy for the ecosystem starting in 2027 when the patents expire.
Are you so naive? By then, there will be a new format, with its own patents!
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Better (Score:2)
Much better. Pretty much every major OS supports it, but for some reason a lot of embedded devices do not. Media players, Blu-Ray players, and smart TVs in particular.
Re:Helpful for SD Cards (Score:5, Interesting)
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> if you format your sd card to exfat, you're much more likely to have games become suddenly corrupted
Is this the format or the driver at fault?
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Depends, exFAT is more likely to corrupt it's files compared to FAT32.
Completely false. The issue is as it always is - with the implementation. Nintendo Swtich is suffering from a poorly written file system driver, nothing more, nothing less. Easily just as bad with any file system.
The practical difference in reliability between exFAT vs FAT32 is that the latter contained 2 mirrored allocation tables. However... It was pointless. The tables are not check summed nor are they tested against each other on the fly meaning it is impossible to determine which is the correct on shou
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If the device supports it, maybe, although I had some weird corruption issues in a couple places.
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...unless you formatted them under Linux.
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>"...unless you formatted them under Linux."
Yep. All my systems are Linux. And any SD card or flash drive that I intend to use in non-computers (phone, camera, roku, picture frame, mp3 player, whatever), I will reformat immediately anyway, and under Linux, of course.
Now, if that card or flash drive is solely used under Linux machines, I will format it with ext4. Otherwise, typically FAT32.
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Many SD Cards suffered from this limitation when formatted with FAT32.
Nope. None suffered from this limitation unless you arbitrarily created it, and that was a direct result from the standards group governing it. In 2009 when the SD Association created a standard for SD cards larger than 32GB they specifically separated it from the SD standard that came before. They called it SDXC. SDXC's included requirements that they *must* be pre-formatted with exFAT which had no 32GB limitation, and all SDXC compatible devices must support exFAT.
Put simply it was not possible to buy an
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Cool story.
Now let me tell you one, as well.
If you want to use a card or USB stick that is larger than 32 GB with devices that only support FAT32, what do you do?
Well, you format it as FAT32.
And what happens?
Well, you're SOL (Shit Out of Luck)... that is, until now.
See, that's what happens when you read "formatted with FAT32" and actually understand "pre-formatted with FAT32", for reasons I can't fathom. You try to come out as smug and smart, and manage to come out as "whoops, I haven't read the text proper
About FAT32'ing time (Score:1)
In my corporate environment we've run into problems because of this limit.
Maybe enough companies complained.
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Ah, someone who's still using a grossly antique disk format. Why is your company stuck with this? Lots of Windows 98 machines?
Re:About FAT32'ing time (Score:5, Informative)
You don't only use FAT32 in your desktop as a main filesystem. FAT32 is nowadays mostly used for transport between devices. Billions of devices of any form factor (cameras, phones, car stereos, printers, whatever you can think of) support FAT32. Go buy a USB thumbdrive, it will probably be >32GB. Want to be able to use it to play music in your car? Well, tough luck...
(of course, many of the devices I mention, such as my car's music system, won't support >32GB volumes... so no, the problem is not solved by "just" formatting them to FAT32 )
Re:About FAT32'ing time (Score:5, Insightful)
FAT32 is ultra-portable.
It can be read and written by almost any OS on almost any device, including cameras, phones, and logging sensors.
So, FAT32 is the preferred file system for removable storage, such as SD cards and thumb drives.
These days, you can buy terabyte SD cards and thumb drives, so a 32 GB limit is a problem.
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So, FAT32 is the preferred file system for removable storage, such as SD cards and thumb drives.
2009 called and it wants your comment back. FAT32 is not the preferred file system. In fact any SDXC card (which makes up most of the SD card market today) is required by standards to be pre-formatted exFAT, and all SDXC devices must support exFAT.
exFAT has been the preferred filesystem for 15 years now - literally preferred by the SD Association and their published standards.
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Not FAT 32 anymore...? (Score:1)
Can it still be called that in a technical sense?
Still FAT32 (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, it's still FAT32 — FAT tables' entries are represented by 32-bit numbers. This means, there can be 2 clusters on a FAT32 volume. If you have 2 clusters (4294967296 clusters, roughly 4 billion clusters) and 2TB (2) storage, each cluster will need to be 2 (because 41-32=9) bytes long, that is, 512 bytes long.
In a time where physical sectors are 4KB, this is nowhere limiting. If only for cluster size (the measure that prompted the move from FAT12 to FAT16 in the mid-80s and from FAT16 to FAT32 in the mid-90s), FAT32 is alive and well, and can probably live on for a decade or so before cluster sizes are too large.
*However*, FAT32 IS an old filesystem, obsolete and brittle in many ways. Its only virtues is that it is a VERY simple to understand filesystem (I often teach its details over two classes — yes, I teach that subject ), and that it is supported on billions of devices, from IoT to supercomputers. But we should not be partying because Microsoft decides not to kill it yet.
Simple file systems are good for some use cases (Score:1)
Whether it's FAT32 or something similar, simple file systems are good for simple use cases.
Your typical cheap DVR that records or plays back only 1 or 2 files at a time is a good candidate. 2TB is on the high end of "normal size" for a consumer-grade DVR in 2024. Within a few years though, 2TB will be considered "small" for a DVR.
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The more important thing is that 4GB is considered a small file for a DVR.
Use more than 1 file (Score:1)
Some DVRs use more than one file for larger videos. Movie.mpeg, Movie.mpeg.1, Movie.mpeg.2, etc. or something like that.
Re: Still FAT32 (Score:2)
It's unfortunate that /. stripped all exponents out of your otherwise most excellent post.
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Ugh, you are completely right :-(
sprinkle my post with "32" (for natural maximum size) and "41" (for 2TB) exponents... That should make it readable.
FWIW, I think that solely by the capacity measure, FAT32 should be at least workable for... say, 64KB clusters (that is, 16 bits). That would represent 48 bits of bytes, that is, volumes up to 256TB.
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In FAT32 cluster sizes <32GB are "up to" 16kB and >32GB they need to be 32kB. I'm sure there is plenty of embedded software that is unable to handle 32kB cluster sizes leading to corruption. I also believe the partition structure needs to be GPT instead of MBR. I think there will be things "out there" that support the prior Microsoft standard and lead to weird situations.
FAT32 is sadly the default for such "brilliant" implementations as UEFI.
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FAT32 was always supported up to 2TB sizes. It's just that for nearly 30 years, Windows didn't
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You literally replied to and quoted someone who provided the information that the cluster size is 32KB. This is the smallest unit of file size on the file system. So a 4KB Word document would take up 32KB on disk and a 33KB Word document would take up 64KB.
There are still up to 2^32 clusters. That is the 32-bit limit in the FAT32 name.
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Specifically, I'm referring to larger filesystems at the 2TB limit.
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200MB is the maximum for a valid UEFI partition. Which may sound excessive now, but it is actually not enough if you wanted to load the entire kernel into there, which is what some fast-booting implementations want to be able to do, right now any kernel you want to load directly from UEFI is only capable of chaining/bootstrapping another kernel which leads to insecurity, indirection and general inefficiencies.
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I think there will be things "out there" that support the prior Microsoft standard and lead to weird situations.
I think that nearly 20 years ago there were digital cameras telling you to format the card on the camera itself but it would read just fine on a computer.
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Quoting the almighty Wikipedia:
"Cluster values are represented by 32-bit numbers, of which 28 bits are used to hold the cluster number."
This means 2TB requires at least 8KB clusters. But 8KB clusters on a 2TB volume would use 2GB approx for the two copies of the FAT. Now if you need 2TB FAT volumes, likely you want it for large media files, so e.g. a 128KB cluster size wouldn't be a problem and would use less space for the FAT.
On the other hand, there is support for up to 2^32 sectors, which are usually 512
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why not? I don't think they have made changes to the disk format that require greater than 32-bit integers to handle the filesystem structures themselves.
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Yes, because the on-disk format didn't change. Microsoft just arbitrarily said "FAT32 shouldn't be used above 32GB, use exFAT instead", which didn't work because they also had exFAT be proprietary and thus not at all interoperable, which was the whole point of FAT in the modern era. The arbitrary 32GB limit had to be some "make people use exFAT" move. exFAT still has patents, and Microsoft stil reserves the right to demand royalties, so exFAT is largely a no-go (even though they 'open sourced it', they s
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exFAT still has patents
Those patents were relenquished to the public domain in 2019.
For FAT in Windows use this tool (Score:2)
Fixed time ago by: http://ridgecrop.co.uk/guiformat.htm [ridgecrop.co.uk] || http://ridgecrop.co.uk/fat32format.htm [ridgecrop.co.uk]
file size limit? (Score:2)
Re:file size limit? (Score:4, Informative)
Halleluiah! (Score:2)
Windows 11 is at last Windows 98's equal! Because, you know, Windows 98 never had that annoying FAT32 size limitation of 32 Gb.
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Windows has being going downhill since 1.0. :)
Now, where's did I put that DOS floppy?
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When I was young, I knew people who could code in assembly. Not sure if that was an early PC, a C64, or a TRS-80. Might have been all three.
Point is, DOS is just modern bloat!
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I am one of those people. Both 6502 and 8080. Yes I'm that old.
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6502, Z80, Z8000, and 680x0 here.
Re: Halleluiah! (Score:2)
6502, 8086 aaand... System/370!
Re: Halleluiah! (Score:2)
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But I still code in assembly...MIPS.
Data point: Cluster size (Score:2)
If I have this right, the cluster size on at 2TB volume would be 32kb. The on-disk usage of every file stored on the volume will round up to an even multiple of that.
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What a shame it's not their standard anymore. (Score:2)
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RTFA.
Apparently they haven't changed the FAT32 standard (the disc format is still the same), they've just removed a pointless limitation only implemented in their command line tools.
>>>>
"Previously, despite this artificial 32GB limit, Windows systems could still read larger FAT32 file systems if they were created on other operating systems or through alternative methods (e.g., from a Windows PowerShell prompt with administrative privileges or using third-party apps that ignored this artificial s
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>> Oh, so this is just a NEW...implementation of FAT32.
Not even. They just probably just changed a single "max size" parameter in the code of their formatting tool.
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Good but we still have Win10 machines (Score:2)
If I'm reading this right, Windows 11 will be able to read larger partitions but previous Windows versions would not. This means that as long as I'm running a mix, I can't allow Windows 11 to create partitions that customers' Windows 10 machines cannot read.
And yes, I know, upgrade it's free. All the machines that could upgrade have been. The rest get the "this pc can't run windows 11" message and the company is unwilling to do the unsupported registry hack to get around it. So, I guess, they'll be runn
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How did you come to that conclusion from this?:
"Previously, despite this artificial 32GB limit, Windows systems could still read larger FAT32 file systems if they were created on other operating systems or through alternative methods (e.g., from a Windows PowerShell prompt with administrative privileges or using third-party apps that ignored this artificial size limit)."
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You're right, I did. Boy is my face red.
Congratulations Microsoft! (Score:4, Funny)
Windows has finally caught up to where Linux was in 1996, (but only when it comes to formatting fat32 disks).
At this rate Microsoft will finally have native EXT support by about 2070.
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And now (Score:2)
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Does that break other things? (Score:2)
I wonder how many other devices in the world exist that when encountering FAT32 have baked in the 32GB limit and will crash if encountering a device with a larger filesystem or maybe just files larger than 32GB).
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Probably none. FAT32 actually supports 2TB natively. It's just a switch on the format command line.
Literally when you tell it to format fat32 above 32 GB a line of code was like Size > 32 - Respond with 'No too big'.
Even though any non windows system could employ Fat32 at sizes up to 2TB. Since Fat32 is Fat32, windows of course would still read it. They literally limited it just because, basically.
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