The latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27686 has made a significant enhancement by increasing the storage limit when formatting in FAT32 format through the command line. Previously capped at 32GB, it has now been expanded to 2TB. However, this limit adjustment only applies to formatting via the command line, while formatting through the standard format command in the command prompt still retains the 32GB limit.
The 32GB limit on FAT32 has been in place since the days of Windows 95, a good three decades ago. Dave Plummer, a former Windows developer at Microsoft, once mentioned on X that he was responsible for the format dialog box on Windows, and he was the one who set the 32GB limit, a restriction that has remained untouched.
Dave explained that back then, they had to decide how much space should be left in each cluster slack on the disk before it ended at the 32GB mark. This decision was arbitrary, without a specific rationale behind it.
Source: Windows Blog via The Verge
TLDR: The latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Build increases the FAT32 format storage limit to 2TB from 32GB, a restriction set by Dave Plummer during the Windows 95 era without a clear rationale.
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