generic hierarchical file system software

The prefix K, M, G and T of each unit is assumed to be 2 10, 2 20, 2 30 and 2 40 respectively. Numbers starting with '0x' are assumed to be hexadecimal numbers, and others are decimal numbers. (FAT16 always include FAT12, FAT32 includes all FAT types) About Notations in this Document These are developped in order of the number and completely backward compatible with older one. Currently there are three FAT sub-types, FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32. FAT is the abbreviation of File Allocation Table, which is the array to manage allocation of data area and the name of the file system itself. Over the time, its specs has been expanded to support laeger media as increasing its capacity. It was originally developped a simple filesystem suitable for floppy disk less than 500k bytes in size. The FAT file system originated around 1980 and is the filesystem that was first supported by MS-DOS. The filesystem generally denotes the entire system to manage data stored on the storage, however, this document describes the data format of FAT filesystem on the storage device.

FSInfo Structure of FAT32 and Backup Boot Sector.

For exFAT filesystem, please refer here in addition to this documentation. And there is a possibility that there is any unintended or intended error in this documentation, so that you need to refer the primary sources of FAT filesystem and make sure behavior of the real systems when write FAT driver or utility. If the behavior of standard system is differ from the FAT specs, it is written in accordance with the real systems rather than FAT specs. It is written according to the contents of the FAT specs and the behavior of the standard system (real DOS and Windows), however, there are many improvements and ommissions from the FAT specs. This is a documentation about FAT filesystem written based on the FAT32 Filesystem Specification (FAT specs below) to know how FAT filesystem works and how to manage it.

Generic hierarchical file system software