Therefore, you can see, the maximum size of partition/volume that the FAT file system can manage is the product of the maximum number of entries and cluster size (the number of entries determines the number of clusters that the file system can deal with). And then the system can traverse the FAT, looking up the cluster number of each successive part of the disk file as a cluster chain until the end of the file is reached. When you need to look for a file, the system will check root directory of the disk that contains the number of the first cluster of each file in that directory. Each entry contains either the number of the next cluster in the file, or else a marker indicating the end of the file, unused disk space, or special reserved areas of the disk. The table is a linked list of entries for each cluster. When you format a partition to FAT file system, an index table (the file allocation table) will be created to identify chains of data storage areas ( clusters) associated with a file in the partition.
Why can't the old FAT file systems manage large disk? To figure out this problem, you should learn how FAT file systems manage disk. The reason why Microsoft releases new FAT file systems is that the old FAT file system can't manage so large a disk as disk drive capacity increases. Please note that 8-bit FAT, FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32 are variants of the FAT file system.
#Fat32 vs ntfs usb windows#
In 1996, FAT32 was released for Windows 95 OSR2 / MS-DOS 7.1. In 1984, FAT16 was released and in the next few years Microsoft released FAT16 improved versions (FAT16B and FAT16X). It is the first widely used version of the FAT file system. In 1980, FAT12 was released, along with the first version of DOS. The first FAT version is 8-bit FAT released in 1977 and it was only used in some terminal computer systems at that time. And it was later adapted for use on hard disks and other devices. About FAT File SystemįAT, short for File Allocation Table, is a file system originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks. Therefore, in this article, I only focus on FAT vs FAT32.
#Fat32 vs ntfs usb how to#
exFAT – Differences and How to Format to. If you want to know the difference between FAT32 and NTFS, you can read this post: NTFS vs. When you create or format a drive smaller than 4GB, the Windows system will offer you 3 file system options: FAT, FAT32, and NTFS. Can I Break Through FAT Volume Size Limit in Windows 10?.