A 30-year-old Windows feature was created as a temporary solution

Over the weekend, Dave Plummer, a programmer and former Microsoft developer known for such notable achievements as creating the Windows Task Manager, porting Space Cadet Pinball, and adding Zip file support to the OS, shared a fascinating story that once again proved that no nothing more permanent than temporary.

Continuing Plummer's series of behind-the-scenes posts about Windows development, the latest story involves the Format Disk dialog box. operating system, which was developed as a temporary solution almost 30 years ago, in late 1994.

30 years have passed since then, but the "elegant user interface" never appeared, and the solution, conceived on a rainy Thursday morning as a non-permanent fix, continues to exist, remaining unchanged even in the latest version of the OS, Windows 11.

Another interesting fact: the 32 GB limit in FAT was "an arbitrary decision that continues to be a side effect to this day." Although the format supports volumes up to 2TB, Dave simply chose 32GB (because it was temporary). Since Microsoft never updated the lines of code, the limitation remains in effect to this day.

Microsoft is probably not going to change this Windows OS feature anytime soon; after all, it's been 30 years. Also not changing Format option that will force users to switch to Windows 11. In any case, it is interesting to know that something so common in the OS was just a temporary solution.