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The 2 GB limit refers to a physical memory barrier for a process running on a 32-bit operating system, which can only use a maximum of 2 GB of memory. [1] The problem mainly affects 32-bit versions of operating systems like Microsoft Windows and Linux , although some variants of the latter can overcome this barrier. [ 2 ]
Many 32-bit computers have 32 physical address bits and are thus limited to 4 GiB (2 32 words) of memory. [3] [4] x86 processors prior to the Pentium Pro have 32 or fewer physical address bits; however, most x86 processors since the Pentium Pro, which was first sold in 1995, have the Physical Address Extension (PAE) mechanism, [5]: 445 which allows addressing up to 64 GiB (2 36 words) of memory.
MSDN Article: Memory Limits for Windows Releases; The system memory that is reported in the System Information dialog box in Windows Vista is less than you expect if 4 GB of RAM is installed – explains the issue; Windows Vista SP1 includes reporting of Installed System Memory (RAM) – details about the RAM limit
exFAT is intended for use on flash drives and memory cards such as SDXC and Memory Stick XC, where FAT32 is otherwise used. Vendors usually pre-format SDXC cards with it. Its main benefit is its exceeding of the 4 GB file size limit, as file size references are stored with eight instead of four bytes, increasing the limit to 2 64 − 1 bytes.
Both of these are vastly higher than the 128 GB [a] limit in Windows XP SP1. The size of a partition in the Master Boot Record (MBR) is limited to 2 TiB with a hard drive with 512-byte physical sectors, [25] [26] although for a 4 KiB physical sector the MBR partition size limit
Some vendor-specific external drive enclosures (e.g. Maxtor, owned by Seagate since 2006) are known to use HPA to limit the capacity of unknown replacement hard drives installed into the enclosure. When this occurs, the drive may appear to be limited in size (e.g. 128 GB), which can look like a BIOS or dynamic drive overlay (DDO) problem.
Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me use a similar file, and the settings for it are located under Control Panel → System → Performance tab → Virtual Memory. Windows automatically sets the size of the page file to start at 1.5× the size of physical memory, and expand up to 3× physical memory if necessary.
Windows 7 also supports the newer exFAT file system. As the ReadyBoost cache is stored as a file, the flash drive must be formatted as FAT32, NTFS, or exFAT in order to have a cache size greater than FAT16's 2 GB filesize limit; if the desired cache size is 4 GB (the FAT32 filesize limit) or larger, the drive must be formatted as NTFS or exFAT.