Re: Use of FAT32 with WXP


Rod Pemberton wrote:
....
FAT32 creates only slightly larger cluster sizes after 8GB, 8k instead
of 4k for NTFS... Perhaps, you were thinking of FAT16 which uses much
larger cluster sizes?

My winXP (original CD, not upgraded) is limited to 64 GB partitions
and show a cluster size of 32 KB with FAT32 on this size.
I don't know why, it could have used smaller clusters as well
because the limit is 2^28 clusters (FAT32 uses only 28-bits).

I'm not sure of the specifics on where FAT32 starts creating huge
cluster sizes,

Huge? AFAICT (links below), it never does. Maximum is 16KB for FAT32,
not
64KB of FAT16. I'd guess you're thinking of FAT16.

FAT16 got several limits:
HW and BIOS-INT13 support (my old 486 can handle max. 512 MB HDs),
DOS-version (ie: DOS 6.00 can see only the first 2GB of a HD)
because FAT16 allow only up to 32 KB clusters (~2 GB).

but it [FAT32 cluster size] tends to become astronomical at a point,

For FAT32? 16KB maximum?

These links are good sources on FAT and NTFS:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/140365

the above seem to be in conflict with the M$-FATgen-specs.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/67321

the latter seems to be conform.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/154997
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310525

fine that we got a 2 TB limit for NTFS in theory ...
but my XP is unable to even format 64 GB or recognise HDs >128 GB.

__
wolfgang


.

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