These days, file formats are rarely something that the average Windows PC user needs to worry about, but the more wizened among you may remember the days of dealing with the FAT32 format. This is thanks to it being very old and, as a result, also being pretty widespread while also having odd limitations by today’s standards. Microsoft is removing one of those limitations, but unfortunately it’s probably not the one you’re thinking of.
As Microsoft announced in a blog post concerning the Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27686, the FAT32 file format is getting its partition size increased from 32GB to 2TB. Though the post mentions that this is only for when formatting using the command line, so it’s unclear if this also applies to the format dialog box when you right-click on a drive.
It’s probably also worth mentioning that, as The Verge reports, Windows has been able to read FAT32 partitions up to 2TB in size. Despite this, Microsoft has not given the average user the ability to make one without using third-party tools. At least, until the feature that’s showing up in this Preview Build gets rolled out to the general user base.
At this point, users with FAT32 beef are probably wondering if anything is happening to the 4GB file size limit when using this file format. With no mention of this being pushed up, it’s probably safe to say that it’s a problem that’s not going away. So it’s a consideration whenever you deal with devices that can’t read the newer exFAT format.
