When it comes to bypassing the 4GB limit of FAT32, you can either reduce the file size or format your drive to other file systems that support larger individual files.

Why Is FAT32 Limited to 4GBįAT32 file system stores and retrieves files with the 32-bit binary numbers, so the maximum file you can store is 2^32 minus 1 bytes that equals 4,294,967,295 bytes, nearly 4GB. So you cannot format a drive as a single FAT32 partition if it is larger than 2TB or smaller than 512MB. But FAT32 does support partitions under 512MB. A drive formatted with FAT32 can hold 2TB files (which consist of separate files under 4GB) in total. Partition size is also called volume size. And if the SD card in your camera is formatted with FAT32, videos larger than 4GB will be saved as smaller clips. Individual files over 4GB are not supported when you want to transfer them to a drive with FAT32 format. Technically, it's 4GB minus 1 byte while considering zero-length file.

With efficient space allocation and good compatibility, FAT32 becomes the de-facto standard that works with Windows, Mac, Linux, game consoles, and other devices with USB ports. It determines how the data is stored and retrieved on a device. What Is FAT32įAT32 (File Allocation Table 32) is a common file format system introduced in 1996 by Microsoft. This post is intended to figure out what the max file size of FAT32 is and how to get around FAT32 file size limits. Suppose you are copying or transferring large files to a USB flash drive and an error message keeps saying 'The File Is Too Large for the Destination File System', 'Flash Drive Says Not Enough Free Space but There Is Plenty', or 'The Parameter Is Incorrect', it's likely that your device is formatted with FAT32 and the files exceed the maximum file size limit of FAT32.

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