1. Forum
  2. USENET
  3. comp.os.ms-windows.misc

  • Fat16 Fat32 Different?

    From Joseph Fenn@jfenn@lava.net to comp.os.ms-windows.misc on Friday, July 25, 2003 12:39:58
    From Newsgroup: comp.os.ms-windows.misc

    Whats the difference actually in Fat16 and Fat32 also 16bit vs32bt.
    I guess what I amsaying is what are the advantages of one over the other.
    I suppose it would be speed more than anything else, also FAT32
    would recognize external HD's of larger sizes than Fat16. Any other explanations would be welcome
    Joe (primarily 8 bit CBM Guy)


    ****************************************************
    * Ham KH6JF AARS/MARS ABM6JF QCWA WW2 VET WD RADIO * ****************************************************


    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Colin Wilson@btiruseless@btinternet.com to comp.os.ms-windows.misc on Saturday, July 26, 2003 00:42:16
    From Newsgroup: comp.os.ms-windows.misc

    Whats the difference actually in Fat16 and Fat32 also 16bit vs32bt.
    I guess what I amsaying is what are the advantages of one over the other.
    I suppose it would be speed more than anything else, also FAT32
    would recognize external HD's of larger sizes than Fat16. Any other explanations would be welcome

    FAT / FAT32 caters for the block allocation (places the computer can
    store data) of the drive - with FAT the blocks were already becoming
    large even on <1Gb drives, so a large amount of space would be "wasted"
    if the drive contained a lot of small files, ie. if the file was 1k and
    the block size was 16k, 15k was "lost" and unusable.

    FAT32 provides the system with much a higher numbers of blocks - it can
    handle bigger drives more easily, and allocate smaller blocks at the
    same time.

    As an example, here`s my windows\system directory:

    1,277 file(s) 235,133,447 bytes
    16 dir(s) 236,032,000 bytes allocated

    Because FAT32 allows smaller block sizes, i`m "losing" less space on
    every file compared to the amount "wasted" for the same file under FAT.

    Because of the increased number of blocks, it often seems like it takes
    longer to defragment a FAT32 drive though :-}
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Skylar Thompson@skylar@thangorodrim.os2.dhs.org to comp.os.ms-windows.misc on Saturday, July 26, 2003 02:52:19
    From Newsgroup: comp.os.ms-windows.misc

    On Sat, 26 Jul 2003 00:42:16 +0100, Colin Wilson <btiruseless@btinternet.com> wrote:
    FAT / FAT32 caters for the block allocation (places the computer can
    store data) of the drive - with FAT the blocks were already becoming
    large even on <1Gb drives, so a large amount of space would be "wasted"
    if the drive contained a lot of small files, ie. if the file was 1k and
    the block size was 16k, 15k was "lost" and unusable.

    FAT32 provides the system with much a higher numbers of blocks - it can handle bigger drives more easily, and allocate smaller blocks at the
    same time.

    As an example, here`s my windows\system directory:

    1,277 file(s) 235,133,447 bytes
    16 dir(s) 236,032,000 bytes allocated

    Because FAT32 allows smaller block sizes, i`m "losing" less space on
    every file compared to the amount "wasted" for the same file under FAT.

    Because of the increased number of blocks, it often seems like it takes longer to defragment a FAT32 drive though :-}

    In addition to this FAT32 provides support for VFAT, which allows for
    longer filenames (IIRC up to 255 characters) and OS/2-style extended attributes.

    --
    -- Skylar Thompson (skylar@os2.dhs.org)
    -- http://os2.dhs.org/~skylar/
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113