The FAT filesystem

FAT or File Allocation Table became famous with the announcement of the DOS operating system from Microsoft in 1980. After this, FAT went through many improvements trying to make it adapt with the rapidly improving technology. So, we can see FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, and exFAT. Each version overcame some of the limitations of the filesystem until the announcement of NTFS filesystem.

FAT components

FAT partition contains five main areas. They comprise the following:

• Boot sector: This is the first sector of the partition that is loaded in memory. If this partition is the active partition, it contains information such as, but not limited to, the following:

  • Jump code: This is the location of the bootstrap and OS initialization code

  • Sector size: This is almost fixed (512 bytes)

  • Cluster size: This is in sectors (sectors/clusters)

  • Number of sectors: The total number of sectors in the partition

  • Number of root entries: This value is used with FAT12 and FAT16 only

• FAT table: This is...