[1] : WordNet (r) 2.0

file allocation table
     n : the prt of a floppy disk or hard disk where information is
         stored about the location of each piece of information on
         the disk and about the location of unusable areas of the
         disk

[2] : The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)

file allocation table
     
         fat the component of an ms-dos or windows
        95 file system which describes the files, directories,
        and free space on a hard disk or floppy disk.
     
        a disk is divided into partitions.  under the fat file
        system each partition is divided into clusters, each of
        which can be one or more sectors, depending on the size of
        the partition.  each cluster is either allocated to a file or
        directory or it is free unused.  a directory lists the name,
        size, modification time and starting cluster of each file or
        subdirectory it contains.
     
        at the start of the partition is a table the fat with one
        entry for each cluster.  each entry gives the number of the
        next cluster in the same file or a special value for "not
        allocated" or a special value for "this is the last cluster in
        the chain".  the first few clusters after the fat contain the
        root directory.
     
        the fat file system was originally created for the cp/m?
        operating system where files were catalogued using 8-bit
        addressing.  ms dos's fat allows only 8.3 filenames.
     
        with the introduction of ms-dos 4 an incompatible 16-bit fat
        fat16 with 32-kilobyte clusters was introduced that
        allowed partitions of up to 2 gigabytes.
     
        microsoft later created fat32 to support partitions larger
        than two gigabytes and pathnames greater that 256
        characters.  it also allows more efficient use of disk space
        since clusters are four kilobytes rather than 32 kilobytes.
        fat32 was first available in oem service release 2 of
        windows 95 in 1996.  it is not fully backward compatible
        with the 16-bit and 8-bit fats.
     
        idg article
       
     http://www.idg.net/idgframes/english/content.cgi?vc=docid_9-62525.html.
        http://home.c2i.net/tkjoerne/os/fat.htm.
        http://www.teleport.com/~brainy/.
        http://209.67.75.168/hardware/fatgen.htm.
        http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q154/9/97.asp.
     
        compare: ntfs.
     
        how big is a fat?  is the term used outside ms dos?  how long
        is a fat16 filename?
     
        2000-02-05
     
     
see also:
ms-dos windows 95 file system files directories hard disk 
floppy disk partitions file system clusters sectors 
root directory cp/m operating system ms dos 8.3 
fat32 pathnames oem windows 95 backward compatible 
lt;idg articlegt; lt;http://home.c2i.net/tkjoerne/os/fat.htmgt; lt;http://www.teleport.com/~brainy/gt; lt;http://209.67.75.168/hardware/fatgen.htmgt; lt;http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q154/9/97.aspgt; ntfs 

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