Microsoft Increases FAT32 Partition Size Limit to 2TB in Windows 11 Insider Preview

Microsoft increases the size limit for FAT32 partitions to 2TB. That limit has always been 32GB, but it will be higher in Insider builds of Windows 11. Currently, this only applies to formatting via the command line and not via the GUI .

The changes are there according to Microsoft in Insider Preview Build 27686 of Windows 11 in the Canary channel. “When format drives through the command line with the file formatcommand, we have increased the FAT32 limit from 32GB to 2TB,” the company writes. This mainly applies to the CLI version and not the GUI in Explorer, which can still create drives up to 32GB. Microsoft wrote It is not known if it will also change the gui later The change is expected to come in a final version of Windows 11 in the future, but it is not known when.

Windows always had an arbitrary limit of 32GB for FAT32 partitions. Users could work around this by using third-party tools or using special commands as an administrator through PowerShell. Windows could also handle large chunks, but not create them itself.