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With this option, Format writes bootstrap code to the first sector of the volume (and possibly elsewhere as well). Format always writes a BIOS Parameter Block to the first sector, with or without the /S option. Another option (/Q) allows for what Microsoft calls "Quick Format". With this option the command will not perform steps 2 and 3 above.
A block, a contiguous number of bytes, is the minimum unit of storage that is read from and written to a disk by a disk driver.The earliest disk drives had fixed block sizes (e.g. the IBM 350 disk storage unit (of the late 1950s) block size was 100 six-bit characters) but starting with the 1301 [8] IBM marketed subsystems that featured variable block sizes: a particular track could have blocks ...
— Microsoft documents a version 4.0 BPB and a new "FAT32 BIOS Parameter Block (BPB)" (a version 7.0 BPB) for DOS-Windows 98 that is "larger than a standard BPB", has an "identical structure to a standard BPB", but that also "includes several extra fields".
The total number of sectors (as noted in the boot record) can be larger than the number of sectors used by data (clusters × sectors per cluster), FATs (number of FATs × sectors per FAT), the root directory (n/a for FAT32), and hidden sectors including the boot sector: this would result in unused sectors at the end of the volume.
UEFI firmware supports booting from removable storage devices such as USB flash drives. For that purpose, a removable device is formatted with a FAT12, FAT16 or FAT32 file system, while a boot loader needs to be stored according to the standard ESP file hierarchy, or by providing a complete path of a boot loader to the system's boot manager. On ...
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]
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File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers and was the default filesystem 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.