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#10 [kernel] Files >2 GiB and > 4 GiB
FreeDOS aborts writing at 2 GiB. Also, it won't even open files >2 GiB created with other systems. No problem in EDR-DOS.
1. [priority=10] Raise the limit to 4 GiB. Trivial ?
2. [priority=5] Delete the 4 GiB limit as well. This obviously violates great M$'s FAT28 spec, but otherwise no problem.
3. [priority=2] Add a better filesystem than FAT.
The suggestions which violate FAT specs or even ask to replace FAT by another filesystem do not belong here. Put them into the WISH (feature request) tracker instead, not into this BUG tracker. Thank you :-).
I don't see these as "bugs." FreeDOS is intended to be a clone of DOS. By default, that includes the same limitations of DOS, including FAT.
I don't see a way to relabel this in the tracker as a "wishlist" item. Can we close?
In the meantime FreeDOS supports files up to 4 GB on FAT32. I tested this by creating files a.txt, b.txt etc, each of them has 1.6 GB size and contains only "AAAAA", "BBBB" etc to find out where the content comes from. Then I ran "copy a.txt + b.txt + c.txt + d.txt + e.txt SUMMARY.txt.
It creates a file of 4 GB.
The only problem where I am not sure if it works correct is:
a) should FD test if it can create a 6 x 1,6 GB file and abort when it sees that this cannot be done?
b) should it stop when the 4 GB border is written?
c) should it at least give a warning that all files cannot be written?
At the moment it starts with a.txt, b.txt, c.txt, there is NO warning that the file size is too big, when 4 GB are full. It simply overwrites the A and B text with the later copied text.
So there is no mistake, but I am not sure if this behaviour is as expected.
I ran some tests with edrdos on a FAT32 partition, it was able to create 30 GB files without problems and added the content as expected. Bernd informed me that edrdos supports FAT32+.
But I am not sure if it is good that it can write such a big file on FAT32, especially as freedos handled it as 4 GB file.