What is FAT16, what is a cluster?
A file is stored on disk in pieces, so called clusters. The FAT (file allocation table) is a chain of pointers: The directory entry points to the first cluster (e.g. 27). The corresponding FAT entry (27) contains the number of the next cluster and so on. The last cluster of the file is marked by EOF. The lowest cluster number is 2. In FAT16 each cluster number is stored as a word (16 bit), so the highest possible cluster number is 65535. Therefore the highest possible capacity of the drive depends on the cluster size: 127 MB if cluster size is 2 KB 255 MB if cluster size is 4 KB 511 MB if cluster size is 8 KB 1023 MB if cluster size is 16 KB 2 GB if cluster size is 32 KB You set the cluster size when you partition your hard disk using FDISK. But be careful: deleting a partition means loss of all data! (There is a bug in FDISK: if you are asked for the partition size enter a little less than you want – e.g. 1019 instead of 1023) For more information about FDISK.EXE and ist parameters pl
