What are the maximum volume sizes and maximum file sizes for the various Windows file systems?

DOS, Windows 95/98/Me does only support fat16 volumes with a maximum size of 2GB - Only the NT-based Windows versions support fat16 volumes between 2-4GB

Johan Korsvold November 18, 2002

For NTFS, you say that XP and 2000 support NTFS 4 and 5, but XP uses NTFS 3.1 (see http://www.ntfaq.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=25515)

Slugsie November 18, 2002

The "Maximum files per volume" given for FAT is not completely correct. FAT is limited to 512 entries in the _root_ folder only; subfolders are allocated with a linked list structure and can accommodate any number of files.

MS made this distinction clear in some old Win95 training materials. The closest convenient reference I can find right now is in the Win2000 ResKit (see "FAT16 vs FAT32", and other places). It doesn't explicitly state that subfolders are unlimited in size, but the ResKit always mentions the root folder when it mentions the 512 file limit.

Thanks.

Jackbox November 20, 2002

It is as the Johan said with one exception. Only NT based windows version 4 and up support 4 GB size for FAT 16. This includes Windows NT4, Windows 2000, Windows XP as of this point in time. This does not include NT version 3 and previous.

Shaun Michalak June 24, 2003

Great... this answered my question exactly. Thank you.

David Lynch October 16, 2003

Under the column "FAT32" it states that you can only format a hard drive up to
32 GB. I have formatted 60 GB drives with no problem at all. Is the 32 GB
correct??

Tom Schoenherr February 04, 2004

yes, this is correct for FAT32 volumes.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/using/productdoc/en/default.asp?url=/WINDOWSXP/home/using/productdoc/en/choosing_between_NTFS_FAT_and_FAT32.asp

gary gnu February 09, 2004

Hi, I was searching for exactly this info. Thanks. I have a question, is there a way to have a file larger than 4Gig on XP Pro?

I am capturing a 40min VHS to my pc, it stops at 4.1 gig (1/2 way)???
Thanks
Murray

Murray March 05, 2004

I tried to copy large no of files in a single folder.
But when the no of files reached 21,448 an error message was shown.
I can't find the exact reason, but after reading this article my doubt was cleared. Thank u.

G.Bharathi mohan April 12, 2004

Hello All,
I ran into a problem recently when I tried storing 1,000,000 files (each of 8Kb)in a folder on C:\ drive. The complete scenario is as under...

I am copying 250000 files in 4 folders to make up a total of 1,000,000 files. These files will be processed and will be stored in a SQL Server database over the network. My machine gets real slow while its copying the files. It has 512 MB ram P4 processor of 2.4 GHz and Hard Disk space of almost 40 GB.

Can anyone please tell me if this is how windows2000 advanced server will behave for 1,000,000 files or there is something that I can adjust to run my machine on a reasonable speed. Right now it takes me almost 30 - 40 minutes to open a folder that has 250000 files in it.

Thanks,
Aijaz

Aijaz Ahmed May 07, 2004