Oracle Database File Size Limits

especially for both older operation systems and older oracle releases there exist limits which define a maximum size for a single database file.

an (older) 32bit-oracle limit is that a database file is only allowed to store a maximum of 4M (4194303) oracle database blocks (DB_BLOCK_SIZE). This is (unsigned) 32Bit minus some overhead. 64bit releases (e.g. 10.1 for Solaris > 2.5) are not limited in this way. this explains why there is a limit of 32GB for dbs on most Oracle 8 Systems (if OS support 32 GB files) as 4M * Blocksize (8K is often the case) gives 32 GB (1k = 1024). In Oracle 10G these size-limited files belong to "smallfile" tablespaces, in pre-10G versions, only this type of tablepace was available. Bigfile tablespaces are new in 10G, are allowed to have only one database file but the filesize is (nearly) unlimited. For a tablespaces blocksize of 8K it is 32TB.

Some OS Limits are:
FAT 4GB
NTFS 16Tb
Solaris < 2.6 2 GB
Solaris > 2.5 1 TB

If you have access to Oracle Metalink, there exists some Oracle Notes for related Problems, see:
Note:62409.1 Solaris
Note:62427.1 2 GB File limits in Oracle
Note:67421.1 Problem with >4 GB on Oracle 8 / NT
Note:112011.1 Autoextend