file - How can FAT32 store files slightly greater than 4GB when the limit is 4GB?

Question

I understand that the limit is 4GB, so how does this work? I have a file on an FAT32 formatted drive that exceeds 4GB by around 0.2GB, and yet the file works fine and is stored correctly. How does that work? Does it have to do with the file format? I've seen this before, but have never really understood it.

Answer 1

4 GB is 4,294,967,296 (2³²) bytes. The algorithm used to calculate the size 4.29 GB assumes that a gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes, where it actually is 1,073,741,824 (2^30) bytes.

This is a common practice used by hard drive manufacturers.

Answer 2

From Wikipedia: The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GiB minus 1 byte or 4,294,967,295 (232−1) bytes.