Ready, Aye, Ready

Recently I had a need to reformat a 60GB USB drive to FAT32 on my Vista box. Back in Windows 2000, Microsoft pulled their FAT32 formatting option out of the GUI as they preferred that people use the proprietary (and admittedly more stable) NTFS. Sometimes though, the older format is what's needed so they left in a command line option. It's too bad they didn't spend a little bit of time doing some parameter checking. It's worth noting that, despite the message below, FAT32's maximum addressable space is 8 TiB, or roughly 8 terrabytes.

Below is an example of what I got after letting the command line setting run for about six hours:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6000]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

C:\Windows\system32>format k: /fs:FAT32
The type of the file system is NTFS.
The new file system is FAT32.

WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK
DRIVE K: WILL BE LOST!
Proceed with Format (Y/N)? y
Formatting 57030M
The volume is too big for FAT32.

C:\Windows\system32>