The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32
theregister.com
The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32
1–10 of 75 posts
Re: The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32
#2TL;DR: "simple lack of foresight combined with the age-old problem of the temporary solution becoming de-facto permanent"
Re: The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32
#3TIL: In 2019, Microsoft released the exFAT [1] specs to a large group of vendors [2], including prominent Linux vendors. I.e. exFAT should now be preferred over FAT/NTFS for media used across different operating systems.
Re: The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32
#4The original video this article is referencing is here if anyone wants to just watch it instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bikbJPI-7Kg
Re: The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32
#5TL;DR: "simple lack of foresight combined with the age-old problem of the temporary solution becoming de-facto permanent"
Exactly. Just another case of "640K should be enough for anybody".
But we have to admit that storage has leapt hugely in size and very rapidly. In 1990 or thereabouts, a common hard disk size was about 30 megabytes. Today I have files that are many times that size, and we think that that is quite normal. A mere five or so years later around 1996, that size had jumped to 4000 megabytes! These days my laptop has 6 million megabytes.
We can't blame filesystem planners for lack of foresight. They were blind-sided by progress just like the rest of us were.
Re: The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32
#6TIL: In 2019, Microsoft released the exFAT [1] specs to a large group of vendors [2], including prominent Linux vendors. I.e. exFAT should now be preferred over FAT/NTFS for media used across different operating systems. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Invention_Network
>TIL: In 2019, Microsoft released the exFAT [1] specs [...] I.e. exFAT should now be preferred over FAT/NTFS for media used across different operating systems.
You seem to be very optimistic about how fast these get implemented into embedded devices.
Re: The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32
#7The choice he made was probably a reasonable balance -- the alternative was reinventing the filesystem, which was probably a bit out of spec for implementing the GUI format dialog. And eventually happened, but it took a while.
Re: The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32
#8TIL: In 2019, Microsoft released the exFAT [1] specs to a large group of vendors [2], including prominent Linux vendors. I.e. exFAT should now be preferred over FAT/NTFS for media used across different operating systems. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Invention_Network
Unfortunately, this only applies to systems that actually have this (i.e. they were updated after exFAT released or released after and included this update). There will be sadly many systems that will never receive this update.
But for a fun fact, if you see many embedded systems that say they can only support an SD card up to 32 GB, it is a soft limitation due to the fact that media over 32 GB are pre-formatted to exFAT (and the system lacks support for exFAT). FAT32 can go up to 2 TB. So I have found that reformatting a larger media back to FAT32 makes it recognizable to that system with all of the storage space.
Re: The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32
#9TIL: In 2019, Microsoft released the exFAT [1] specs to a large group of vendors [2], including prominent Linux vendors. I.e. exFAT should now be preferred over FAT/NTFS for media used across different operating systems. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Invention_Network
>TIL: In 2019, Microsoft released the exFAT [1] specs [...] I.e. exFAT should now be preferred over FAT/NTFS for media used across different operating systems. You seem to be very optimistic about how fast these get implemented into embedded devices.
I have a 2011 car which has a USB port where I can plug a USB stick with MP3s (remember those, kids?) on them, I doubt it will ever be made ExFAT-compatible.
OTOH, I do have the Windows logo on my steering wheel, and somewhere inside the car there's a Windows CE system installed (it doesn't have a multi-color LCD screen and interacts using speech recognition, so it's not really obvious).
Re: The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32
#10TL;DR: "simple lack of foresight combined with the age-old problem of the temporary solution becoming de-facto permanent"
Exactly. Just another case of "640K should be enough for anybody". But we have to admit that storage has leapt hugely in size and very rapidly . In 1990 or thereabouts, a common hard disk size was about 30 megabytes. Today I have files that are many times that size, and we think that that is quite normal. A mere five or so years later around 1996, that size had jumped to 4000 megabytes! These days my laptop has 6 mil…
I have a single file that is 6 million megabytes in size.