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Files larger than 4GB not supported on FAT32.

I accidentally found out that the FAT32 filesystem does not support files larger than 4GB. It happened when I was trying to unrar the files on a DVD into a .iso file. When it was about 92% done, the error window popped up saying “No space for files”.

But I had to make that .iso file. I had to play that game because it was the latest version of the game I loved since I was four years old. Street Fighter, the name of the game.

I found out that this problem is not there with the NTFS filesystem however. So I jumped back to my ubuntu, launched gparted (an ultra powerful application for disk management) and shrunk my 33GB windows partition into 25GB. The 7GB thus gained, I converted into NTFS.

Jumped back into windows again and happily made the .iso file on the NTFS partition. 🙂

PS: Please share your views so as to why FAT32 doesn’t support files larger than 4GB.

3 thoughts on “Files larger than 4GB not supported on FAT32.”

  2. The reason for this phenomenon is that FAT32 uses 4byte addressing. That is 32-bit addressing. As such it can address only address 2^32 memory locations which corresponds to a maximum of 4GB.
    The world is moving on. Time to leave behind the old ways folks!

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