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Advantages of FAT16

FAT16 has advantages such as compatibility with older operating systems and availability of recovery tools, but it has disadvantages such as a small maximum number of file entries and a 4GB size limit. FAT32 allocates disk space more efficiently with smaller clusters and better support for large drives, but it is not compatible with non-Windows operating systems and has a 32GB size limit. Both FAT16 and FAT32 lack security and compression features.

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932 views2 pages

Advantages of FAT16

FAT16 has advantages such as compatibility with older operating systems and availability of recovery tools, but it has disadvantages such as a small maximum number of file entries and a 4GB size limit. FAT32 allocates disk space more efficiently with smaller clusters and better support for large drives, but it is not compatible with non-Windows operating systems and has a 32GB size limit. Both FAT16 and FAT32 lack security and compression features.

Uploaded by

Arpit ⎝⏠⏝⏠⎠ Sharma
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Advantages of FAT16

Advantages of FAT16 are:

 MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000, and some UNIX


operating systems can use it.
 There are many tools available to address problems and recover data.
 If you have a startup failure, you can start the computer with an MS-DOS bootable floppy
disk.
 It is efficient, both in speed and storage, on volumes smaller than 256 MB.

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Disadvantages of FAT16

Disadvantages of FAT16 are:

 The root folder can manage a maximum of 512 entries. The use of long file names can
significantly reduce the number of available entries.
 FAT16 is limited to 65,536 clusters, but because certain clusters are reserved, it has a
practical limit of 65,524. Each cluster is fixed in size relative to the logical drive. If both
the maximum number of clusters and their maximum size (32 KB) are reached, the
largest drive is limited to 4 GB on Windows 2000. To maintain compatibility with MS-
DOS, Windows 95, and Windows 98, a FAT16 volume should not be larger than 2 GB.
 The boot sector is not backed up.
 There is no built-in file system security or file compression with FAT16.
 FAT16 can waste file storage space in larger drives as the size of the cluster increases.
The space allocated for storing a file is based on the size of the cluster allocation
granularity, not the file size. A 10-KB file stored in a 32-KB cluster wastes 22 KB of disk
space.

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Advantages of FAT32

FAT32 allocates disk space much more efficiently than previous versions of FAT. Depending on
the size of your files, there is a potential for tens and even hundreds of megabytes more free disk
space on larger hard disk drives. In addition, FAT32 provides the following enhancements:

 The root folder on a FAT32 drive is now an ordinary cluster chain, so it can be located
anywhere on the volume. For this reason, FAT32 does not restrict the number of entries
in the root folder.
 It uses space more efficiently than FAT16. FAT32 uses smaller clusters (4 KB for drives
up to 8 GB), resulting in 10 to 15 percent more efficient use of disk space relative to large
FAT16 drives. FAT32 also reduces the resources necessary for the computer to operate.
 FAT32 is more robust than FAT16. FAT32 has the ability to relocate the root directory
and use the backup copy of the FAT instead of the default copy. In addition, the boot
record on FAT32 drives has been expanded to include a backup of critical data structures.
This means that FAT32 volumes are less susceptible to a single point of failure than
FAT16 volumes.

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Disadvantages of FAT32

Disadvantages of FAT32 include:

 The largest FAT32 volume Windows 2000 can format is limited in size to 32 GB.
 FAT32 volumes are not accessible from any other operating systems other than
Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows 98.
 The boot sector is not backed up.
 There is no built-in file system security or compression with FAT32.

You can't.
FAT 16 can be read by Win 95 and NT.
You can, in NT, confert from FAT 16 to NTFS, but not from NTFS to Fat 16. You need to re-install NT, and
choose FAT instead of NTFS.
NTFS in the NT File System - better for partitions biggar than 400 MB. With NTFS you have file and folder
security, which you don't have with FAT 16.
FAT 32 is used by Win 98 and Win 95 OSR2

A file allocation table (FAT) is a table that an operating system maintains on a hard disk that provides a
map of the clusters (the basic unit of logical storage on a hard disk) that a file has been stored in. When
you write a new file to a hard disk, the file is stored in one or more clusters that are not necessarily next
to each other; they may be rather widely scattered over the disk. A typical cluster size is 2,048 bytes,
4,096 bytes, or 8,192 bytes. The operating system creates a FAT entry for the new file that records
where each cluster is located and their sequential order. When you read a file, the operating system
reassembles the file from clusters and places it as an entire file where you want to read it. For example,
if this is a long Web page, it may very well be stored on more than one cluster on your hard disk.

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