What does file system FAT32 mean?

Question

Can you tell me why my computer suddenly has the file system FAT32 when it did not previously? My computer keeps running a file consistency check on FAT32. What does this mean? Where would it have come from? Is it a virus? I have windows XP. Thanks

Answer 1

FAT32 is the file system utilized in some of the older versions of Microsoft Windows. It was introduced with OEM Service Release 2 of Windows 95 . FAT32 is the default file system on Windows 98 (all versions: OEM, retail, and SE) and Windows Me.



You can install the FAT32 file system on Windows 2000 (Server and Professional only; Advanced Server and Data Center do not support FAT32), Windows XP (all versions), and even Windows Server 2003. However, for all operating systems capable of it, both UITS and Microsoft strongly recommend using NTFS instead. For more information, see In Windows 2000 or XP, how do I choose between NTFS and FAT32?



Advantages of FAT32

•FAT32 supports disk partitions as large as two terabytes. FAT16 supports partitions up to only 2GB.

•FAT32 wastes much less disk space on large partitions, since the minimum cluster size remains a mere 4KB for partitions under 8GB.

Disadvantages of FAT32

•FAT32 does not allow compression using DriveSpace.

•FAT32 is not compatible with older disk management software, motherboards, and BIOSes.

•FAT32 may be slightly slower than FAT16, depending on disk size.

•None of the FAT file systems provide the file security, compression, fault tolerance, or crash recovery abilities that NTFS does.

Answer 2

You're sure it didn't previously? If it was the usual NTFS and it just randomly believes it switched I can guarantee you it didn't, but SOMETHING is really screwed up. Could be a nasty virus or a simple bug. If someone recently switched the filesystem over without a proper wipe that could cause the errors leading to XP wanting to do consistency checks. Or if it thinks it has FAT32 but it's NTFS and it's detecting the obviously unexpected results.

Answer 3

In order to overcome the volume size limit of FAT16, while still allowing DOS real mode code to handle the format without unnecessarily reducing the available conventional memory, Microsoft implemented a newer generation of FAT, known as FAT32, with cluster values held in a 32-bit field, of which 28 bits are used to hold the cluster number, for a maximum of approximately 268 million (228) clusters. This allows for drive sizes of up to 8 terabytes with 32KB clusters, but the boot sector uses a 32-bit field for the sector count, limiting volume size to 2 TB on a hard disk with 512 byte sectors.



On Windows 95/98, due to the version of Microsoft's SCANDISK utility included with these operating systems being a 16-bit application, the FAT structure is not allowed to grow beyond around 4.2 million (< 222) clusters, placing the volume limit at 127.53 GB.[14] A limitation in original versions of Windows 98/98SE's Fdisk utility causes it to incorrectly report disk sizes over 64 GB.[15] A corrected version is available from Microsoft, but it cannot partition drives larger than 512GB [16]. The Windows 2000/XP installation program and filesystem creation tool imposes a limitation of 32 GB [17]. However, both systems can read and write to FAT32 file systems of any size. This limitation is by design and according to Microsoft was imposed because many tasks on a very large FAT32 file system become slow and inefficient.[14][18] This limitation can be bypassed by using third-party formatting utilities.[19] Windows Me supports the FAT32 file system without any limits.[20] However, similarly to Windows 95/98/98SE there is no native support for 48-bit LBA in Windows ME, meaning that the maximum disk size for ATA disks is 127.6 GB, the maximum size of an ATA disk using the previous long-standard 28-bit LBA.



FAT32 was introduced with Windows 95 OSR2, although reformatting was needed to use it, and DriveSpace 3 (the version that came with Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows 98) never supported it. Windows 98 introduced a utility to convert existing hard disks from FAT16 to FAT32 without loss of data. In the NT line, native support for FAT32 arrived in Windows 2000. A free FAT32 driver for Windows NT 4.0 was available from Winternals, a company later acquired by Microsoft. Since the acquisition the driver is no longer officially available.



The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GB minus 1 byte (232−1 bytes). Video applications, large databases, and some other software easily exceed this limit. Larger files require another formatting type such as NTFS.

Answer 4

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Answer 5

its an old harddrive memory type for windows 95 and 98, the other is ntfs harddrives for better performance