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convert is an external command first introduced with Windows 2000. [2] If the drive cannot be locked (for example, the drive is the system volume or the current drive) the command gives the option to convert the drive the next time the computer is restarted.
A basic data partition can be formatted with any file system, although most commonly BDPs are formatted with the NTFS, exFAT, or FAT32 file systems. To programmatically determine which file system a BDP contains, Microsoft specifies that one should inspect the BIOS Parameter Block that is contained in the BDP's Volume Boot Record.
A Windows command-line utility called convert.exe can convert supporting file systems to NTFS, including HPFS (only on Windows NT 3.1, 3.5, and 3.51), FAT16 and FAT32 (on Windows 2000 and later). [ 30 ] [ 31 ]
There are several variants of the FAT file system (e.g. FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32). FAT16 refers to both the original group of FAT file systems with 16-bit wide cluster entries and also to later variants. "VFAT" is an optional extension for long file names, which can work on top of any FAT file system. Volumes using VFAT long-filenames can be read ...
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).
A FAT12 and FAT16 (and FAT32) extension to support database-like file types random file, direct file, keyed file and sequential file in Digital Research FlexOS, IBM 4680 OS and Toshiba 4690 OS. [18] The record size is stored on a file-by-file basis in special entries in the directory table.
Microsoft and IBM operating systems determine the type of FAT file system used on a volume solely by the number of clusters, not by the used BPB format or the indicated file system type, that is, it is technically possible to use a "FAT32 EBPB" also for FAT12 and FAT16 volumes as well as a DOS 4.0 EBPB for small FAT32 volumes.
For example, the FAT32 file system does not support files larger than 4 GiB−1 (with older applications even only 2 GiB−1); the variant FAT32+ does support larger files (up to 256 GiB−1), but (so far) is only supported in some versions of DR-DOS, [2] [3] so users of Microsoft Windows have to use NTFS or exFAT instead.