He also wrote the File Formatter, which has a file size limit of 32Gb for the Fat32 format for the same reason: it wasn't supposed to be permanent, but it hasn't changed for over 20 years.

I was thinking about this recently, so it is a bug, not a feature

[–] CucumberFetish@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago

If it has been a bug for 20+ years, we can safely say it's a feature for backwards compatibility.

[–] doctorcrimson@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I mean, it was intentional in a way, so the definition of bug is hazy, but the functioning version would be the ExFAT format.

[–] EddoWagt@feddit.nl 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

But the problem isn't in Fat32 itself, as you can format larger disks in that format just fine

[–] doctorcrimson@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Yes, the final line of my comment explains that, it's just that the cluster size in Fat32 has a lower bound so if you have files smaller than the cluster then they take a whole cluster, and that can lead to cluster slack that is vast majority wasted space.