The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32

Post by est31 » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

kop316 wrote: post #8

m000 wrote: post #3

TIL: 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 e…

Post by Thristle » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

mnw21cam wrote: post #10

simonblack wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by bilekas » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #6

m000 wrote: post #3

TIL: 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.

Post by kop316 » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

est31 wrote: post #12

kop316 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

> 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). There might also be the issue of the card reading hardware only supprting SDHC instead of SDXC (or SDUC).

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 3:06 PM UTC

hocuspocus wrote: post #11

If my memory serves well, when 40+ GB HDDs started being common, you were either using Windows 2000 and NTFS already, or it was probably a good practice to have several partitions, given the overall unreliability of Windows 9x and the not so infrequent clean reinstallations. And then came Windows XP and the issue was moot. It's a bit of a shame Microsoft didn't push and open up exFAT earlier and allowed FAT32 to beco…