# What's the current single file size limit for Win 7 & 8? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 29, 2013, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-current-single-file-size-limit-for-win-7-8/669919 "2013-09-29T14:26:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2013, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-current-single-file-size-limit-for-win-7-8/669919/1 "2013-09-29T14:26:50Z")
I know there’s always a file limit in any file system. I can remember in the 90’s you couldn’t make a file bigger than 2.1 Gig on Win NT 4 using NTFS. I know because our Exchange Mail folder reached that limit and I was royally screwed. Our office EMail stopped working. I had to frantically archive all the staff’s mail on their local pc’s to free up space in the Exchange server’s file until we could buy a new server with a newer OS. It wasn’t that long ago FAT32 had us trapped in a 32Gig disk drive limit and a 4GB file size limit. So what is Win 7 and 8’s default file system these days? Is it exFAT? Or something else? What’s the drive size limit and single files size limit? * * * I’m using a laptop and a Canopus ADVC300 box as my DYI DVR. I just switched from using XP and Win Movie Maker. Now using Win 7 and bought Cyberlink Power Director for my recording and editing out commercials. Then Handbrake to create to x264 mp4’s. I’m using Power Director’s default DVD HQ capture profile (MPEG-2) and it uses an insane amount of disk space. 3.2 Gig an hour. I got up this morning and started recording a 3 Hour block of shows on the DIY channel (6 episodes of one show). I was a bit antsy wondering if the file would save. 😛 Thankfully, it just did. All 9.8Gig of it. Triple the space that Win XP’s Win Movie Maker’s WMV file’s required for 3 hours. You really can’t stop recording, save and restart during a block of programming. Because it takes about 3 or 4 minutes to Get the recording stopped, file written to disk and then the recording reinitialized. It’s just too tight to fit in a commercial break. Somehow I suspect I’m getting pretty darn close to the file limit. So what is it? ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2013, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-current-single-file-size-limit-for-win-7-8/669919/2 "2013-09-29T14:36:05Z")
It depends on how your volume is formatted. With NTFS: > [@](#): > > With Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, the maximum NTFS file size is 256 TB minus 64 KB or 281,474,976,645,120 bytes. With FAT32, it’s still 4GB. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2013, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-current-single-file-size-limit-for-win-7-8/669919/3 "2013-09-29T14:49:04Z")
So Win 7 & 8 are using NTFS as the default? I’ve heard of FAT32+ but wasn’t sure if it was being used by Win 7 & 8 by default. I haven’t kept up with it for a few years, but knew these Terabyte drives had to be using something besides standard FAT32. I’m still shocked how quickly we jumped from 500GB drives to Terabyte practically overnight. I knew they were coming but didn’t think the technology was ready. Fooled me. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2013, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-current-single-file-size-limit-for-win-7-8/669919/4 "2013-09-29T15:07:43Z")
I’m not a Windows guy, so I don’t know what format Win 7 and 8 use by default. I would guess it’s NTFS. You should probably just check your drive to be sure. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2013, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-current-single-file-size-limit-for-win-7-8/669919/5 "2013-09-29T15:25:08Z")
I just checked my Tower PC running Win 7 32bit. Under My Computer the drive properties show NTFS. Obviously an updated standard since the primitive NT 4.0 NTFS days. Those 2.1 Gig partition limits sucked in NT 4. As I said in the OP, it nearly killed our Exchange server and forced us to buy a new server with Windows Server 2003 on it. thanks beowulff! ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2013, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-current-single-file-size-limit-for-win-7-8/669919/6 "2013-09-29T15:27:05Z")
NTFS is what Windows puts, by default, on main hard drives that are connected in such a way that Windows thinks the disks are non-removable. For those little thumb drives, the default file format is FAT32. This is probably because it is more compatible (Macs and Linux machines have an easier time reading it without special software installed) or possibly there is less overhead. Many thumb drives today are 16 gigabytes are more, so the 4 gig/file limitation can sometimes be a problem. If this comes up, you’ll need to remove all the files from the drive and reformat it to NTFS. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2013, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-current-single-file-size-limit-for-win-7-8/669919/7 "2013-09-29T17:06:03Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > If this comes up, you’ll need to remove all the files from the drive and reformat it to NTFS. Or run the “[convert](http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214579)” command from a command line. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2013, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-current-single-file-size-limit-for-win-7-8/669919/8 "2013-09-29T19:30:10Z")
> [@Habeed](#): > > NTFS is what Windows puts, by default, on main hard drives that are connected in such a way that Windows thinks the disks are non-removable. > > For those little thumb drives, the default file format is FAT32. This is probably because it is more compatible (Macs and Linux machines have an easier time reading it without special software installed) or possibly there is less overhead. > > Many thumb drives today are 16 gigabytes are more, so the 4 gig/file limitation can sometimes be a problem. If this comes up, you’ll need to remove all the files from the drive and reformat it to NTFS. FAT doesn’t have file permissions. If it’s formatted to NTFS, or ext4, or whatever, you might have trouble reading it on another machine or if it’s mounted differently. FAT doesn’t have that problem. Linux doesn’t normally have any problems reading NTFS.