[wellylug] FAT32 partition size

[Phillip Hutchings]

On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 09:54:48 +1300, Rob Giltrap <rob at kiwihq.com> wrote:
> I have always been of the understanding that a FAT32 partition could
> only be 8GB in size. I think that I got this idea from Win98 only being
> able to boot from the first 8GB of the disk or something along those lines.
> 
> So I have been operating with a shared partition between WinXP and
> Ubuntu of 8GB which is woefully inadequate.
> 
> It now dawns on me that I have been stupid and this limitation is not valid.
> 
> My question is, what is the size limit for a FAT32 partition, and are
> the any gotchas I need to be aware of?
> 
> My expected partition layout on my soon to be purchased new notebook HDD
> will be:
> 
> 1) Primary - WinXP recovery 2GB
> 2) Primary - WinXP proper 15GB
> 3) Primary - FAT32  25GB
> 4) Primary - Extended - Linux / 15GB
>                  - Extended - Linux Swap .5GB
> 
> Does this make sense?

It's somewhere around 240GB for FAT32 iirc, but the block sizes would
be huge. Windows XP will only let you format FAT32 partitions up to
32GB, as MS are trying to make people use NTFS.

Anyway, your setup looks fine.


-- 
Phillip Hutchings
http://www.sitharus.com/
sitharus at gmail.com / sitharus at sitharus.com