Though it’s a proprietary Microsoft technology, Apple licensed it for use in its OSes so you’ll see it as an option when formatting a drive in OS X. It debuted in Windows Vista SP1, it has a maximum file size of 16 exabytes (EB) (it’s going to take us a while to hit that), and it’s compatible with both Mac and PC. Though Windows file systems work the same regardless of drive type I wanted to expand on his piece a bit by including the system called exFAT, so in this piece I’ll discuss the three file systems, their pluses and negatives, and which one to use according to your needs.ĮxFAT: This is an updated file system created by Microsoft to replace FAT32. My colleague wrote about this previously in regards to external drives, but he was discussing high-capacity hard drives you plug into your PC.

In dealing with this it occurred to me that Majid probably isn’t alone, and people might not be aware of the fact that you can format a USB key in Windows using one of three available file systems, and that each system has both advantages and limitations. He sent me a screenshot that clearly indicated the problem, as it read “The file is too large for the destination file system.” I replicated the issue quite easily by trying to move a 10GB file to a Fat32 disk, as Fat32 can’t handle any file larger than 4GB.įAT32 has a 4GB file size limitation, making it tough to copy HD or 4K video footage.

Majid was unable to copy a movie from his PC to his newly acquired 32GB USB key, and wondered why.

Format usb drive to fat32 on windows 10