Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers and was the default file system for the MS-DOS and Windows 9x operating systems. [citation needed] Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on hard disks and other devices.
The FAT file system is a file system used on MS-DOS and Windows 9x family of operating systems. [3] It continues to be used on mobile devices and embedded systems, and thus is a well-suited file system for data exchange between computers and devices of almost any type and age from 1981 through to the present.
Because file size references are stored in eight instead of four bytes, the file size limit has increased to 16 exabytes (EB) (2 64 − 1 bytes, or about 10 19 bytes, which is otherwise limited by a maximum volume size of 128 PB, [nb 2] or 2 57 − 1 bytes), raised from 4 GB (2 32 − 1 bytes) in a standard FAT32 file system. [1]
The native file systems of Unix-like systems also support arbitrary directory hierarchies, as do, Apple's Hierarchical File System and its successor HFS+ in classic Mac OS, the FAT file system in MS-DOS 2.0 and later versions of MS-DOS and in Microsoft Windows, the NTFS file system in the Windows NT family of operating systems, and the ODS-2 ...
The FAT12 and FAT16 file systems in IBM PC DOS/MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows prior to Windows 95 used the same 8.3 convention as the CP/M file system. The FAT file systems supported 8-bit characters, allowing them to support non-ASCII characters in file names, and stored the attributes separately from the file name.
UMSDOS, UVFAT – FAT file systems extended to store permissions and metadata (and in the case of UVFAT, VFAT long file names), used for Linux; UnionFS – stackable unification file system, which can appear to merge the contents of several directories (branches), while keeping their physical content separate
VFAT, a variant of FAT with an extended directory format, was introduced in Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.5. It allowed mixed-case Unicode long filenames (LFNs) in addition to classic 8.3 names by using multiple 32-byte directory entry records for long filenames (in such a way that old 8.3 system software will only recognize one as the valid directory entry).
All of the Linux filesystem drivers support all three FAT types, namely FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32.Where they differ is in the provision of support for long filenames, beyond the 8.3 filename structure of the original FAT filesystem format, and in the provision of Unix file semantics that do not exist as standard in the FAT filesystem format such as file permissions. [1]