Revisiting the Legacy of Microsoft’s Format Dialog Box in Windows 11

Back in the early days of Microsoft, a software developer at the headquarters in Redmond checked in some code for a dialog box he was working on. The intention was for the box to be temporary, as it was very basic at the time. However, no one ever got around to updating it, and surprisingly, it remains the same in Windows 11 today. Dave Plummer, a former developer at Microsoft, shared the intriguing story of how the Format drive dialog box came into existence almost three decades ago.

When Windows NT needed a different user interface from Windows 95, Plummer took on the task of designing a custom UI for formatting drives. He meticulously listed down all the options and choices users could make regarding formatting a disk, such as filesystem, label, cluster size, compression, and encryption. Plummer’s initial design was meant to be a stopgap solution until a more elegant UI was developed. Nevertheless, that anticipated improvement never materialized, leading to Plummer’s basic UI design continuing to be used in Windows 11.

One interesting limitation that arose from Plummer’s design decision was the format size of a FAT volume being restricted to just 32GB. This constraint was a result of Plummer having to determine how much “cluster slack” would be considered excessive. As a result, the 32GB limit for FAT volumes was set that morning as an arbitrary choice and has persisted as a permanent side effect ever since. Despite FAT’s capability to support volumes of up to 2TB, users need to resort to third-party tools in Windows to create such volumes, even though Microsoft’s OS can read them correctly.

Despite numerous revisions to the Windows user interface over the years, the Format dialog box has remained untouched since its inception in Windows NT. This stagnation highlights the enduring legacy of Plummer’s temporary solution that inadvertently became a long-standing feature in Windows operating systems. It serves as a testament to the unpredictable nature of software development, where seemingly temporary solutions can evolve into permanent fixtures with far-reaching consequences.