Windows XP/2000 FAT32 Formatting Limit
- "While the FAT32 file system can support drives up to a standard theoretical size of 2 terabytes, (it 'can' be jury-rigged under Windows Millennium Edition to support partitions of up to 8 TB), Windows 2000 Professional and XP Professional cannot FORMAT a volume larger than 32 GB in size using their native FAT32 file system.
- "The FastFAT? driver can mount and support volumes larger than 32 GB that use the FAT32 file system, such as those created locally by Windows 98 or ME in dual boot configuration, (subject to other limits listed here for Windows 98, ME and 2000 and here for Windows XP), but you cannot CREATE one using the Format tool from within either Windows 2000 Professional or XP Professional. If you attempt to format a FAT32 partition larger than 32 GB, the format fails near the end of the process with the following error message:
Logical Disk Manager: Volume size too big."
MC MCSE: Windows XP Professional File Systems Overview
sudo mkdosfs -v -F 32 /dev/hdc5
mkdosfs 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)
/dev/hdc5 has 255 heads and 63 sectors per track,
logical sector size is 512,
using 0xf8 media descriptor, with 625137218 sectors;
file system has 2 32-bit FATs and 32 sectors per cluster.
FAT size is 152547 sectors, and provides 19526002 clusters.
Volume ID is 456cb06b, no volume label.