Fat32; Ntfs; A.2.2 Fat32; A.2.3 Ntfs - Apricorn EZ Gig II User Manual

Back up entire disks and partitions

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The FAT16 file system has a 2GB limit that permits a maximum 65,507 clusters that

are 32KB in size. (Windows NT/2000/XP support partitions up to 4GB with up to

64KB clusters). Usually the smallest cluster size is used to make the total cluster

amount within the 65,507 range. The larger a partition is, the larger its clusters are.

Usually the larger the cluster size, the more disk space is wasted. A single byte of data

could use up one cluster, whether the cluster size is 32KB or 64KB.

Like many other file systems, the FAT16 file system has a root folder. Unlike others,

however, 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 on file names. They could only be eight characters

long, plus a dot, plus three characters of name extension. However, long-name

support in Windows 95 and Windows NT bypassed this limitation. The OS/2

operating system also supports long names, but does so in a different way.

A.2.2

FAT32

The FAT32 file system was introduced in Windows 95 OSR2. It is also supported by

Windows 98/Me/2000/XP. FAT32 is an evolved version of FAT16. Its main

differences from FAT16 are 28-bit cluster numbers and a more flexible root, whose

size is unlimited. The reasons FAT32 appeared are the support of large hard disks

(over 8GB in capacity) and the impossibility of implementing any more complex file

system into MS-DOS, which is still the basis for Windows 98/Me.

The maximum FAT32 disk size is 2 terabytes (1 terabyte, or TB, is equal to 1024

gigabytes, or GB).

A.2.3

NTFS is the main file system for Windows NT/2000/XP. Its structure is closed, so no

other operating system is fully supported. The 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.

NTFS stands for NT File System.

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.

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