Posts Tagged ‘File Systems’

This article covers an important limitation of FAT32 and introduces exFAT as an alternative along with a small history of the File Allocation Table (FAT) file system.

It is the oldest file system for Windows OS and is mainly designed for removable media. It first came out as FAT12 (12 refers to the size ‘in bits’ of the FAT entries in the actual FAT structure), and by the time as the storage media size increased, more types were developed to increase the number of bits, so we got FAT16, FAT32 and finally exFAT (Extended FAT aka FAT64).

While, FAT12 was designed for small media at its time such as Floppy Disks, exFAT was introduced by Microsoft to best suit USB Flash Drives now a day.

FAT is good for removable media because it is considered to be a light-weight file system due to its simplicity (e.g. it was not designed to support security or access rights). Nevertheless, FAT can be recognized by outdated systems, for instance, FAT12 and FAT16 are recognized by all operating systems from MS-DOS forward and FAT 32 from Windows 98 forward.
FAT16, FAT32 and exFAT may be used for Hard Disks for storage purposes or even for Windows installation, but this will be on the price of losing NTFS benefits. However, Win98 does not support NTFS, so its case is different. Read the rest of this entry »