Wikipedia: Design of the FAT File System
Design of the FAT file system A FAT file system is a specific type of computer file system architecture and FAT a family of industry-standard file systems utilizing it. Developer(s) Microsoft, SCP, IBM, [3] The FAT file system is a legacy file system which is simple and robust. It Compaq, Digital offers good performance even in very light-weight implementations, but Research, Novell, cannot deliver the same performance, reliability and scalability as some Caldera modern file systems. It is, however, supported for compatibility reasons by Full name File Allocation Table: nearly all currently developed operating systems for personal computers and FAT12 (12- many home computers, mobile devices and embedded systems, and thus is a bit version), well suited format for data exchange between computers and devices of almost FAT16 (16- any type and age from 1981 through the present. bit versions), Originally designed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, FAT was soon adapted and FAT32 (32-bit version used almost universally on hard disks throughout the DOS and Windows 9x with 28 bits used), eras for two decades. Today, FAT file systems are still commonly found on exFAT (64- floppy disks, USB sticks, flash and other solid-state memory cards and bit versions) modules, and many portable and embedded devices. DCF implements FAT as Introduced 1977 (Standalone the standard file system for digital cameras since 1998.[4] FAT is also utilized Disk BASIC-80) for the EFI system partition (partition type 0xEF) in the boot stage of EFI- FAT12: August 1980 compliant computers. (SCP QDOS) FAT16: August 1984 For floppy disks, FAT has been standardized as ECMA-107[5] and (IBM PC DOS 3.0) ISO/IEC 9293:1994[6] (superseding ISO 9293:1987[7]).
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