After nearly three decades, Microsoft is finally increasing the FAT32 partition size limit. This long-overdue update isn’t yet widely available—it’s currently limited to Windows 11 insiders using the latest Canary release—but as the saying goes, better late than never.
FAT, or File Allocation Table, was originally designed for floppy disks but eventually became the default file system for many Microsoft operating systems until NTFS took over in 2001 with Windows XP. Former Windows developer Dave W. Plummer, who created the familiar format dialog box in 1994, intended it as a temporary solution until a more refined UI was developed—a plan that never materialized.
In a recent post, Plummer explained that his work also involved determining how much “cluster stack” would be too much, which ultimately capped the format size at 32GB. Now, nearly 30 years later, Microsoft is finally addressing the size limit. The latest Windows 11 Canary build (27686) increases the FAT32 partition size limit from 32GB to 2TB. This update currently applies only to disks formatted via the command line, though a GUI update may follow.
Windows has long supported reading FAT32 partitions up to 2TB, but creating them required third-party tools. It’s also important to note that files stored on a FAT32-formatted drive still have a maximum size limit of 4GB each.
While FAT32 is less popular today, having been largely replaced by NTFS and exFAT, it’s still widely used in USB drives and SD cards. This size limit increase is a much-needed update for those who continue to rely on this file system.