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Table 3. The following table gives the approximate depend-
ence of these losses versus the cluster size:
Partition Size
<127 MB
128–255 MB
256–511 MB
512–1023 MB
1024–2047 MB
2048–4096 MB
Like many others, FAT16 file system has a root folder. Unlike others how-
ever, its root folder is stored in a special place and is limited in size (standard
formatting produces a 512-item root folder).
Initially, FAT16 had limitations to file names that could only be 8 characters
long, plus a dot, plus 3 characters of name extension. However, long name
support in Windows 95 and Windows NT bypasses this limitation.
A.9.3
FAT32
FAT32 file system appeared in Windows 95 OSR2 and is also supported by
Windows 98/ME and Windows 2000/XP. FAT32 grew out of FAT16. The main
differences between FAT32 and FAT16 are 28-bit cluster numbers and more
flexible root folder implementation, which is not limited in size. The reason
for FAT32 is the necessity to support large (larger than 8 Gigabytes) hard
disks and the inability to build any more complex file system into MS-DOS,
which is still in the core of Windows 95/98/ME.
Maximum FAT32 file system size is 2 Terabytes.
A.9.4
NTFS
NTFS file system is the main file system for Windows NT/2000/XP. Its struc-
ture is closed, so no other operating system fully supports. Main structure of
NTFS is the MFT (Master File Table). NTFS stores a copy of the critical part of
the MFT to reduce the possibility of data damage and loss. All other NTFS
data structures are special files.
Like FAT, NTFS uses clusters to store files, but cluster size does not depend
on partition size. NTFS is a 64-bit file system, it uses Unicode to store file
names. It is also a journaling (failure-protected) file system, and supports
compression and encryption.
Files in folders are indexed to speed up file search.
74
Appendix A : Hard Disk And Operating System
Cluster Size
2 KB
2%
4 KB
4%
8 KB
10%
16 KB
25%
32 KB
40%
64 KB
50%
Wastes
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