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