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Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: WMCoolmon on October 15, 2005, 05:40:45 pm

Title: Max FAT32 size
Post by: WMCoolmon on October 15, 2005, 05:40:45 pm

Does anyone know the maximum size for a fully-functional FAT32 drive? I had a link sometime that said, but seem to have lost it...

Basically, I'd be using this drive under Linux/Windows, and can create it with a tool from either. Ditto for maintenance.

Title: Max FAT32 size
Post by: Bobboau on October 15, 2005, 05:42:52 pm

technicaly, it's suposed to be somewere arounndt 2 GB, but I think it can be any size in practice.

Title: Re: Max FAT32 size
Post by: karajorma on October 15, 2005, 05:48:07 pm

Quote

Originally posted by WMCoolmon
Does anyone know the maximum size for a fully-functional FAT32 drive? I had a link sometime that said, but seem to have lost it...

Basically, I'd be using this drive under Linux/Windows, and can create it with a tool from either. Ditto for maintenance.

Depends on what you use. This (http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm)  page has quite a few limits on it although it is a bit old.

Title: Max FAT32 size
Post by: CP5670 on October 15, 2005, 05:58:17 pm

It's about 2TB. The Windows utility won't be able to format anything over 32GB, but a third party one should work. If you have a retail drive then those usually come with a format utilities that work well.

Title: Max FAT32 size
Post by: WMCoolmon on October 15, 2005, 06:48:40 pm

Thanks. :) I thought there was something regarding data corruption on volumes larger than a certain size though...is there a reliable source that debunks that?

Title: Max FAT32 size
Post by: Grey Wolf on October 15, 2005, 09:44:52 pm

I had problems at about 100GB during my WXP/Ubuntu experiment. Write errors and the like.

Title: Max FAT32 size
Post by: ZylonBane on October 16, 2005, 05:58:14 pm

Quote

Originally posted by Bobboau
technicaly, it's suposed to be somewere arounndt 2 GB, but I think it can be any size in practice.

That's FAT16.

Title: Max FAT32 size
Post by: StratComm on October 16, 2005, 06:51:59 pm

The maximum size varies directly with the block size that you specify (as does pretty much every other limitation of FAT32), at least so far as I recall.  There's other limitations when Scandisk gets involved though.