SoundForge officially supports file sizes of 4GB+
http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/Products/showproduct.asp?PID=668&FeatureID=5797(yes, Sony recently purchased all of Sonic Foundry's products. SoundForge 7 should ship later this month)
a little clarification on the file-size limitations:
(copy/pasted here, link to page at bottom)
"LIMITATIONS:
First, when creating any type of file, one should be aware that there is
a limitation in Windows95/98 of 2 gigabytes (GB) that limits files
(regardless of file type) to the same maximum file size as the FAT16
file system, which is 2 GB minus 1 byte (FAT16 on NT limit is 4
gigabytes). Therefore, on computers using the FAT32 file system, the
maximum file size is 4 GB minus 2 bytes. To create larger than 4GB
files load NTFS on your NT machine. The file size limitation is hundreds
of GB. (232 clusters so file size depends on cluster size setup on
disk.) Here are the limits for
FAT16: file 2 gigabytes, partition 2 gigabytes
FAT16 (NT): file 4 gigabytes, partition 4 gigabytes
FAT32: file 4 gigabytes, partition 2 terrabytes
NTFS: file 2 terrabytes, partition 16 exabytes (18.4 x 10^18 bytes)"
http://realforum.real.com/realforum/msg07620.htmlfilesystems Windows use(chronological order of release. default FS listed 1st):
Windows 95a - FAT16
Windows NT4 - NTFS or FAT16
Windows 95b/c - FAT32 or FAT16
Windows 98/SE - FAT32 or FAT16
Windows 2000 - NTFS5 or FAT32
Windows ME - FAT32 or FAT16
Windows XP - NTFS5 or FAT32
Windows 2000 and newer will read/write FAT16 data
if you follow the link above you will see that Windows 98 had a limitation of 2GB in order for it to be back-wards compatible with previous versions of Windows. Many programs adopted the hard-coded limit of 2GB to stay backwards compatible as well.