Re: [vox] re. FAT size restrictions

["ME" <dugMAPSan@passwall.com>]

Richard S. Crawford said:
> When I had the shared partition formatted as FAT32, I saw a kernel
> message claiming that FAT32 write support was alpha-level only, which is
> why I switched to FAT16.

Where did you see this? (I'd like to know, to read about it more.)
Are you sure it was not a reference to Linux on the Alpha (DEC chip fame)
and not alpha-software?

In Linux, examine inclusion of the "vfat" module to mount fat32 based
partitions.

I have used it for many years (Windows 95-Windows 2000) and it has worked
well for me as a filesystem type to get files between both OS as each are
booted on the same machine.

> I considered Pete's suggestion of -- uh --
> that piece of software that would allow a Windows user to write to an
> ext3 filesystem, but saw that was pretty experimental as well.  I needed
> something that would let me read and write consistently and reliably to
> the shared partition from both Windows and Linux; hence my decision to
> use FAT16.

With Windows NT, came the feature of 4GB root filesystems on FAT16.
Wasteful, but possible. NTFS was a better choice for security, but not so
great for a dual boot NT4/Linux system where files from NT4's boot volume
would be wanted. A shared extra FAT16 partition (1GB) was a good middle
ground if you needed NTFS for other stuff.

Windows 2000, has it better with more FS support and Linux, but worse with
NTFS support and linux.

> Originally, the partition was set to 5GB.  When I tried to format that
> partition in parted, it would not allow me the option of formatting in
> FAT16, so I resized the partition to 4GB.

Yep. The Max MS permits for FAT.

> At that point, I could format
> fine in FAT16 from parted.  Just to double check, I booted into Windows,
> and reformatted the partition as FAT16.  No problems.  I've written
> files to the partition from both OS's, and read them just fine as well.
> If there are size restrictions, my system does not appear to be
> suffering any consequences. :)

Linux has no problem with 4GB FAT16 partitions, AFAIK, and you seem to
show this to still be the case. It is just inefficient, as the minimum
filesize (even for empty files) is rather huge, and wasteful.

-ME



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