Back in the day, at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, a developer casually checked in some code for a dialog box intended to be temporary. Little did he know that this basic dialog box would remain unchanged for nearly 30 years. Dave Plummer, a former developer at Microsoft, shared the interesting story of how the Format drive dialog box came into existence in a recent post.
When Windows NT was being ported from Windows 95, Plummer had to come up with a custom user interface for the Format drive feature. He sketched out the various options related to formatting a disk on a piece of paper and created a simple UI as a stop-gap measure until a more sophisticated interface could be developed. However, that elegant UI never materialized, and Plummer’s temporary solution persisted over the years.
An interesting tidbit shared by Plummer is that the decision to limit the format size of a FAT volume to 32GB was also made on the spur of the moment. This arbitrary choice, made all those years ago, still affects users today. While FAT technically supports volumes of up to 2TB, the Format dialog box in Windows enforces the 32GB limit. Users who wish to create larger FAT volumes need to resort to third-party tools.
Despite numerous revisions to the Windows user interface over the years, the Format dialog box has remained untouched since its inception in Windows NT. It’s a relic from the past that continues to serve its purpose, albeit with some limitations that were initially unintended.
Overall, the story behind Windows 11’s unchanged Format dialog box serves as a reminder of how decisions made in the past can have longstanding consequences. It also sheds light on the iterative nature of software development, where temporary solutions can sometimes become permanent fixtures. As technology continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see if and when Microsoft decides to finally update the Format dialog box for modern systems.
Leave a Reply