Microsoft has not made an official announcement on why the option to format FAT32 is no longer available for devices 64GB in capacity and above.

In both Windows 10 and Windows 11 the format option given by Windows is either NTFS (New Technology File System) or exFAT (Extended File System). The option to format FAT32 is no long available in Windows.

Without an official announcement from Microsoft we can only speculate the reason is do to single file sizes averaging a larger size as of 2023.

The largest single file size supported by the FAT32 file system is 4GB. This is due to the limitations of the file system’s design. FAT32 uses a 32-bit file allocation table, which means it can address up to 4,294,967,295 clusters. Since each cluster in FAT32 is typically 4KB in size, the maximum file size is limited to 4GB (4,294,967,295 clusters multiplied by 4KB per cluster).

If you need to store files larger than 4GB, you will need to use a different file system that supports larger file sizes, such as NTFS (New Technology File System), exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table), or others. NTFS, in particular, is commonly used in modern Windows operating systems and supports much larger file sizes, making it suitable for storing large files and operating system installations.

We speculate, to reduce customer inquiries or complaints to Microsoft they have eliminated the option of FAT32 to any device of 64GBs or larger in capacity. The reason is that a user will receive an error message from the device when an attempt to copy a single file of 4GBs or larger to a FAT32 device. To reduce the frequency of error messages, by formatting the device as exFAT will eliminate this error.

The ExFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) file system supports significantly larger file sizes compared to FAT32. The maximum file size supported by ExFAT is a staggering 16 exabytes (EB), which is equivalent to 16 million terabytes (TB) or 16 billion gigabytes (GB). This vast file size limit allows for storing extremely large files, such as high-resolution videos, large databases, or disk images.

ExFAT was specifically designed to overcome the limitations of FAT32, including the maximum file size restriction. It is commonly used in various devices and operating systems, including Windows, macOS, and some embedded systems, for handling large files and providing interoperability between different platforms.

It’s important to note that while ExFAT supports large file sizes, the actual maximum file size might be limited by the specific implementation or the capabilities of the storage medium itself.

If the above information was helpful, please consider looking at some advanced flash drives offered by Nexcopy. Advanced functions include USB copy protection, USB write protection, USB CD-ROM, and HIPAA compliant flash drives. These functions are done at the hardware level and are universal solutions.

TeamViewer is one of the most popular applications to share computer screens with other people. However TeamViewer is very expensive. Is there a TeamViewer alternative? Yes there is… and it’s 100% free.

We found a TeamViewer alternative one day because, as a business, we had to provide technical support to a remote Windows computer. TeamViewer is very clear about their software being used in a business should have a business license.

From the screen shot below, you can see a single license is $34.90 per month. What TeamViewer doesn’t tell you… until half way through the purchase process… is a yearly subscription is your only option. Ugh. This now puts your TeamViewer cost at $418.80 for a single year. More licenses require a bigger financial commitment.

We immediately went into TeamViewer alternative mode.

As an alternative, we found Quick Assist from Microsoft.

Quick Assist is 100% free and offered by Microsoft which allows users to share their computer screen and give free and total control to the other. There is no time limit for a sharing session and there is no limit to the number of times you can use the tool, or no limit for whom you use the tool with.

You need to download the free utility from the Microsoft App store, and that process is extremely easy. Type “quick assist” into the search bar and Windows will provide a link to download.

After download the Quick Assist app is ready for use.

By launching the app you can either input a code from an Assistant who is helping you remotely, or you can select the option to assist someone else. See the image below.

To assist another person you will need a Microsoft account and if you don’t have one, Quick Assist will put you through the process in a couple steps.

If you are receiving help from someone, a Microsoft account is not required.

Below are a couple screen shots for getting connected between an “assistant” and the one receiving the help.

The first thing to understand is that image files are a messy business. There is plenty of cross-over information and functionality between image file extension types – it is easy to get confused!

Don’t be surprised if you can’t mount an .img file in Windows 10 with their default utility – it’s a common problem and this article will help.

It is important to understand not all image files are the same. Heck, not all .img files are the same. Some basics: For the term “image files” you typically see .img files and .iso file extensions and they have similar functionality and conceptually accomplish the same goal. The goal is for an image file to hold digital content, in a single file, of a file system and a its set of data. If that sentence is confusing, then maybe think of an image file this way: a zip file (but without compression).

A very quick summary explaining the difference of .img and .iso image files. An optical disc holding data is configured differently than hard drive storage space. The optical disc has data written in a linear configuration and is a digital binary copy of the ISO 9660 standard or derivative UDF standard. The ISO file extension is a single file which contains all the digital information just described.

An .img file is a digital copy of the contents of a hard drive or flash drive. Technically you can have an .img of a CD or DVD as well, but most should associate the image of a disc as ISO. An .img file is a disk image which begins with a FAT sector which is used to identify the file system and files contained inside the image file. The image file of a disc (ISO) begins with a descriptor file which describes the layout of the disc.

That last sentence is important:

USB stick manufacturers will rejoice with this news.  No longer will their flash memory be limited with the FAT32 file system, but rather an unlimited size of storage space.

Up to this point FAT file systems had a limitation of 4GB for a single file size and up to 32GBs for an entire volume.  But no more.  Microsoft has released a new exFAT file system.  This means our USB sticks will become supersized and no longer need to worry about dynamic file structures of NTFS.  With USB memory getting bigger each year, this is great news for mobile storage.

On January 27 2009, Microsoft released their new exFAT file system.  Or extended File Allocation Table [exFAT]. Here is some information off the Microsoft website:

The exFAT file system is the successor to FAT32 in the FAT family of file systems. The exFAT file system is a new file format system to address the growing demand and size of mobile storage like USB sticks, PDAs, and solid state hard drives. What’s nice about the exFAT file system