Questions tagged [fat16]
37 questions
31
votes
1 answer
Why is FAT32 limited to just under 2^28 clusters?
With FAT16 the maximum partition size is 2GB when your maximum cluster size is 32K.
This is calculated by multiplying the number of addressable units by the cluster size.
(216 Allocation units) * (215 bytes/cluster) = 2 GiB
However with FAT32,…
QMord
- 696
27
votes
5 answers
How do I format my 8 GB USB drive to FAT/FAT16 in Windows 7?
I already tried FORMAT /FS:FAT, diskpart, Disk Management and HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool.
Do I really need to buy a smaller capacity drive? Can't a formatting tool ignore the area beyond 2 GB?
My Asus netbook's BIOS update requires the USB to…
William C
- 271
18
votes
5 answers
Should I format USB sticks and SD cards to FAT, FAT32, exFAT or NTFS? (Windows files, live Linux distributions)
Does it depend on the media size which one to chose or on some other parameters? On Windows 7, FAT16 is the default. In pendrivelinux.com's Universal USB Installer, FAT32. Which one should I chose? How about NTFS for Windows use?
How about exFAT? It…
superuser
- 534
10
votes
1 answer
Windows delays writing FAT table on small USB drive despite “Quick removal”
I am seeing delayed writes to the FAT on a small-capacity FAT(FAT12)-formatted USB flash drive even though the policy for the drive is set to "Quick Removal". (I believe this means the SurpriseRemovalOK flag is set). I've captured the SCSI commands…
Dan Halbert
- 261
7
votes
3 answers
How do I tell between FAT16 and FAT32 USB? (Windows)
How can I tell if my USB stick is formatted as FAT16?
Windows 7 Disk Management says that my USB stick is a FAT volume. But it doesn't say whether it's FAT16 or FAT32. I opened the Property window and it doesn't tell between FAT16 and FAT32 either.
Le Curious
- 205
5
votes
2 answers
Minimum volume size for FAT16
What are the theoretical and practical minimum sizes for a FAT16 volume?
I'm trying to determine the smallest Flash-chip size that can handle a FAT16 FS.
MandoMando
- 320
4
votes
2 answers
Linux returns “No space left on device” while copying data to a non-full USB flash drive
I'm trying to copy a file to a USB flash drive. The drive does not have a write-protect switch.
df gives the following:
$ df -h .
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sde1 1.9G 622M 1.3G 33% /media/lindenb/803C-078D
df -i…
Pierre
- 143
3
votes
1 answer
why did my computer come with FAT16 partition for EFI boot?
I recently got an Intel Compute Stick with Ubuntu 14.04 pre-installed. From the factory, it has 4 partitions:
FAT16 boot 47.x MB
FAT32 microsoft data 1.x MB
ext4 Ubuntu 14.04 5.x MB
swap
Using sudo fdisk -l and sudo parted -l, I confirmed that…
ChrisM
- 31
2
votes
1 answer
How FAT (File Allocation Table) works?
I got the following description of FAT from a powerpoint slide:
Partition boot record(1 sector)
-------------------------------
Main FAT (size is up to 2 clusters)
-------------------------------
Backup FAT (sam size as main…
gonnabe
- 41
- 1
- 3
2
votes
2 answers
How to calculate the minimum number of bytes required for the minimum FAT32 partition?
From experimentation with newfs_msdos, I determined that the minimum number of bytes required to create a FAT32 partition is 34089472. One byte less and the program complains:
$ newfs_msdos -F 32 -c 1 -S 512 -C 34089471 tm
newfs_msdos: 65524…
Roxy
- 379
2
votes
1 answer
What does FAT reserve clusters for?
Based on the information I can see from this page:
FAT12 uses a maximum of 4086 clusters (2^12 - 10)
FAT16 uses 65526 (2^16 - 10)
FAT32 uses ~268435456 (2^28)
I understand that FAT32 uses 28 bits instead of 32 as 4 bits are reserved, but what…
VortixDev
- 1,214
2
votes
1 answer
Why would some folders be copied with the wrong timestamp?
When copying folders from a FAT16-formatted microSD card onto an NTFS volume, why would some (but not all) of the folders have a modified timestamp of the current date/time on the destination?
Some of the destination folders have timestamps matching…
Amazon Dies In Darkness
- 9,990
2
votes
2 answers
Mac OS X - rmdir fails with "Operation not permitted" for a folder created by a PC on a removable drive
I have a problem (using Mac OS X 10.5.8) with the access rights of a folder that was presumably created by a virus on a disk-on-key drive when I used it with a PC. I can't remove the folder or change it's name. In Finder's Info window the Lock box…
maxint
- 121
1
vote
2 answers
Flash drive doesn't mount on mac
I've got two different USB flash drives which are formatted MS-DOS(FAT-16). When I plug each into my MacBook Pro (running MacOS 10.6 - Snow Leopard), they don't mount. I can see them using Disk Utility. When I run an Ubuntu VM inside of VMWare…
Doug Harris
- 28,397
1
vote
1 answer
WinXP cannot access FAT/FAT32 Drives
One of my systems, running WinXP SP3, can no longer access FAT and FAT32 formatted drives.
When I insert a USB flash drive, it is recognized and assigned a drive letter, but when I try to access it I get a "disk not formatted" error.
The same drives…
Alex O
- 685