30 years ago at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, developer Dave Plummer recorded temporary code for the Formatting dialog box. It was assumed that in the future the appearance and functionality of this window would be redesigned, but no one managed to do this – in Windows 11 the “Format” tool looks the same as in Windows NT.

“We ported millions of lines of code from the Windows 95 interface to NT, and formatting was just one of the areas where Windows NT was so different from Windows 95 that we had to create our own user interface. , — said Plummer. — I took out a piece of paper and started formatting the drive with file system, tags, cluster size, compression, encryption, etc. I wrote down all possible options like “

Based on this primitive “technology problem”, Plummer created a simple formatting utility that he added to the Windows NT code base as a workaround. “until a stylish user interface comes along”. This UI improvement never materialized, and nearly 30 years later Plummer’s workaround is still used in Windows 11.

The 32 GB FAT volume size limit is also partly due to Plummer. “I needed to make a decision about the maximum cluster backup size allowed and as a result the FAT volume was limited to 32 GB, — confesses Plummer. — “This limitation was an arbitrary choice that morning and has become a permanent side effect.”. In fact, you can create a FAT volume up to 2TB with the help of third-party programs, and it will then work normally in Windows.

Despite several generations of Windows user interface changes, Microsoft hasn’t touched the Formatting dialog since its introduction in Windows NT years ago. Obviously, the developers were guided by the principle: “it works – do not touch it!”.