File Allocation Table: Difference between revisions

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The FAT32 boot sector uses a 32-bit field for the sector count, limiting the maximal FAT32 volume size to 2&nbsp;[[terabyte]]s with a sector size of 512&nbsp;[[byte]]s. The maximum FAT32 volume size is 16&nbsp;TB with a sector size of 4,096&nbsp;bytes.<ref name="Microsoft_2007_KB184006" /><ref name="Microsoft_2007_KB314463" /> The built-in [[Windows shell]] disk format tool on Windows NT arbitrarily only supports volume sizes up to 32&nbsp;GB,{{refn|group="nb"|This was a decision taken by the developer in question, who assumed his decision would be revised later, something that never happened.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/04/windows_format_fat32/ | title=Explained: The thinking behind the 32GB Windows Format limit on FAT32 }}</ref>}} but Windows supports reading and writing to preexisting larger FAT32 volumes, and these can be created with the [[command prompt]], [[PowerShell]] or third-party tools,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Glenn |first=Walter |title=How to Format USB Drives Larger Than 32GB With FAT32 on Windows |url=https://www.howtogeek.com/316977/how-to-format-usb-drives-larger-than-32gb-with-fat32-on-windows/ |access-date=2021-01-26 |website=How-To Geek |date=July 20, 2017 |language=en-US |archive-date=2021-01-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210126003213/https://www.howtogeek.com/316977/how-to-format-usb-drives-larger-than-32gb-with-fat32-on-windows/ |url-status=live }}</ref> or by formatting the volume on a non-Windows system or on a Windows 9x system with FAT32 support and then transferring it to the Windows NT system. In August 2024, Microsoft released an update to Windows 11 preview builds that allows for the creation of FAT32 partitions up to 2TB in size.<ref>{{Cite web |author1=Roshan Ashraf Shaikh |date=2024-08-16 |title=Windows 11 preview build sees FAT32 partition size increased to 2TB after 30 years |url=https://www.tomshardware.com/software/operating-systems/windows-11-preview-build-sees-fat32-partition-size-increased-to-2tb-after-30-years |access-date=2024-08-23 |website=Tom's Hardware |language=en}}</ref>

The maximal possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4&nbsp;[[Gibibytegigabyte|GiBGB]] minus 1 byte, or 4,294,967,295 (2³²&nbsp;−&nbsp;1) bytes. This limit is a consequence of the 4-byte file length entry in the directory table and would also affect relatively huge FAT16 partitions enabled by a sufficient sector size.

Like FAT12 and FAT16, FAT32 does not include direct built-in support for long filenames, but FAT32 volumes can optionally hold [[#VFAT|VFAT]] long filenames in addition to short filenames in exactly the same way as VFAT long filenames have been optionally implemented for FAT12 and FAT16 volumes.