Many people think that the 32 GB limit for Windows is a hard limit. You can’t format your Windows partition to more significant than 32 GB. However, this is not true.
The truth is that the 32 GB limit is soft. This means that you can technically format your Windows partition to be larger than 32 GB, but some risks are involved
Why Is There a Limit?
The main reason there is a limit is the FAT32 file system. This was the default file system for many years, and it has a 4 GB maximum file size limit. This means that if you try to format your Windows partition to be larger than 32 GB, you will run into problems because of the 4 GB file size limit.
What Are the Risks?
The biggest risk is that you could potentially lose data if you try to format your Windows partition to be larger than 32 GB. This is because of the way that FAT32 works. When you format a drive with FAT32, it doesn’t actually use up all of the space on the drive. It reserves some space for “overhead.” This overhead can range from 1-7% depending on the size of the drive.
For example, let’s say that you have a 100 GB hard drive and you format it with FAT32. The actual amount of space that you will have to work with will be closer to 93 GB. This is because FAT32 reserves 7% of the drive for overhead. Now, let’s say that you have a 500 GB hard drive and you try to format it with FAT32.
The actual amount of space that you will have to work with will be closer to 465 GB. However, this is still less than the 478 GB that Windows requires in order to install itself.
This means that if you try to install Windows on a 500GB hard drive that has been formatted with FAT32, you will run out of space and your installation will fail.
You could also potentially lose data if you try to store files on your hard drive that are larger than 4GB. This is because FAT32 can’t store files larger than 4GB in a single cluster. Hence, look at the thinking 32GB windows format limit.
What Should You Do?
So what should you do if you want to format your Windows partition to be larger than 32 GB? The best option is to use the NTFS file system. This file system doesn’t have any size limitations and it will work with Windows without any problems
If you want to format your hard drive with NTFS, you can use the Windows built-in tool or you can use a third-party tools.
Conclusion:
So, should you format your Windows partition to be larger than 32GB? If you need more space, then yes, you can technically do it. However, there are some risks involved. You could lose data or your installation could fail. If possible, it’s best to stick with drives that are 32GB or smaller so that you don’t have to worry about these potential problems.