The File Allocation Table organizes the storage space on your hard drive. This table works like the table of contents of a book, telling the operating system where the files are located on the drive.
FAT32 is an enhancement to the existing FAT16 format. Its most notable feature is the ability to support drives up to 2 terabytes in size. It also decreases the cluster size on larger drives from 32K to a mere 4K, which reduces the amount of unused space. This 4K size is for drives up to 8 GB (gigabytes) in size, which is about what most users have.
To maintain compatibility with existing programs, the FAT16 internal data structure, on-disk format, and other operations were changed as little as possible. However, there are some changes, which prevent certain disk operations from working on FAT32 drives. These are designed to prevent older disk utilities from damaging a FAT32 drive.
All of the disk utilities included with Windows 98 (format, FDISK, defrag, and scandisk) have been updated to support the FAT32 system. Also, most third party companies are rewriting their device drivers and tools to support FAT32.
Another advantage of FAT32 is its ability to relocate the root directory and use the backup copy of the FAT. This feature means that FAT32 drives have a better chance of recovery of a single point of failure than a FAT16 drive.
Probably the best new feature is that programs can load up to 50% faster because of the smaller cluster size. The Disk Defragmenter program optimally positions the application on the hard drive resulting in faster load times.
Please note that you cannot dual boot Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 if you use FAT32. Windows NT 4.0 canÆt access or boot from a FAT32 drive.
Now that youÆve read this youÆre saying, "Wow! I want my programs to load faster, I need more drive space. How do I get FAT32?" ItÆs easy. If youÆve purchased a system pre-installed with Windows 98, more than likely it already has the FAT32 system installed. If youÆve upgraded from an existing version of Windows, or installing Windows 98 for the first time, chances are you will need to convert your drive to FAT32. To verify what file system your drives are using, open the Windows Explorer or My Computer and right-click on the C drive. Select Properties from the menu and look at the screen. There will be an item File system: which will say FAT or FAT 32.
Windows 98 contains a new program; Drive Converter (FAT32) located under Start, Programs, System Tools. This program converts your FAT16 system to a FAT32 system. Please note that you should backup important data when converting. Depending on the size of your drive and how much data is on it, this process can take several hours to complete.
If you are running a Virus Checker program you should close it before starting, it may warn of a virus and ask if you would like to fix the problem. You should answer no, because the anti-virus program will try to restore your FAT16 information to a FAT32 drive - resulting in data loss.
You should remove all virus-checking software and disable any BIOS virus checking. After the successful conversion, you can then re-install the software and enable BIOS virus checking.
The program displays a series of screens that show the options needed to convert your drive. Once you have answered all the questions and selected the drive, the program begins the conversion. First it will perform a ScanDisk on the drive to check for errors. Then it will run a DOS program that converts the drive to the new format. When that is complete; it will run the disk defragmenter program.
