File Allocation Table

Key facts

Developer s

Microsoft , NCR , SCP , IBM , Compaq , Digital Research , Novell , Caldera

Full name

File Allocation Table

Variants

8-bit FAT, FAT12 , FAT16 , FAT16B , FAT32 , exFAT , FATX , FAT+

Introduced

1977 ( 1977 ) with Standalone Disk BASIC-80

Partition ids

MBR / EBR : FAT12: Values in C-notation for hexadecimal numbers</span>"}]]}'>0x 01 e.a. (Extended Attribute) FAT16: Values in C-notation for hexadecimal numbers</span>"}]]}'>0x 04 0x06 0x0E e.a. FAT32: </span>"}]]}'>0x 0B 0x0C e.a. BDP : EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7

Directory contents

Table

File allocation

Linked list

Bad blocks

Cluster tagging

Max volume size

FAT12: 32 MB (256 MB for 64 KB clusters) FAT16: 2 GB (4 GB for 64 KB clusters) FAT32: 2 TB (16 TB for 4 KB sectors )

Max file size

4,294,967,295 bytes (4 GB − 1) with FAT16B and FAT32

Max number span no of files

FAT12: 4,068 for 8 KB clusters FAT16: 65,460 for 32 KB clusters FAT32: 268,173,300 for 32 KB clusters

Max filename length

8.3 filename , or 255 UCS-2 characters when using LFN

Dates recorded

Modified date/time, creation date/time (DOS 7.0 and higher only), access date (only available with ACCDATE enabled), deletion date/time (only with DELWATCH 2)

Date range

1980-01-01 to 2099-12-31 ( 2107-12-31 )

Date resolution

2 seconds for last modified time, 2 seconds for creation time, 1 day for access date, 2 seconds for deletion time

Forks

Not natively

Attributes

Read-only, hidden, system, volume, directory, archive

Transparent compression

FAT12/FAT16: Per-volume, SuperStor , Stacker , DoubleSpace , DriveSpace FAT32: No

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