FAT file system

Http://www.sjhf.net/pdf/fat.pdf "Fat File system principles"

Where FAT16 refers to the use of 16-digit file allocation table, when the computer runtime system can be stored on the hard disk for the actual length of each file allocated storage unit-"Hard disk cluster", because the 16-bit allocation table can manage up to 65536 (that is, 2 16-square) hard disk clusters, This is the specified hard disk partition. Because each hard disk cluster has a maximum storage space of only 32KB, when using FAT16 to manage the hard disk, the maximum storage capacity per partition is only (65536X32KB) 2048MB, which is what we often say 2G. Due to the FAT16 of the hard disk partition capacity limit, so when the hard disk capacity of more than 2G, users can only divide the hard disk into a number of 2G partitions before normal use, for which Microsoft Company from the Windows95 OSR2 version of the FAT32 standard, even with 32-bit file allocation table to manage hard disk files , so that the system can allocate up to 4294967296 (that is, 2 of the 32) hard disk clusters, so the disk cluster is also 32KB, each partition capacity of up to 65G or more. Also, when you use FAT32 to manage hard disks, the cluster lengths in each logical disk are much smaller than the equivalent capacity logic disks that are managed with the FAT16 standard. Because a file is stored on a hard disk with a minimum amount of disk space in a cluster, a file must occupy the entire cluster even if it has only dozens of bytes, so the smaller the hard disk cluster unit capacity of the logical disk, the more reasonable the storage space can be used. So FAT32 is more suitable for large hard drives

FAT32 also has one of the biggest advantages: in a 8GB partition, the FAT32 partition format of each cluster capacity is fixed to 4KB, compared with FAT16, can greatly reduce the waste of hard disk space, improve the efficiency of hard disk utilization

FAT file system