File Allocation Table Filesystem

File system most commonly used on drives with less than 32GB (like USB Flash Drive). The cluster size varies, but for our example lets say clusters are one Block (4096 bytes or 4-KB). Most files are larger than 4096 bytes, so they must be stored in several clusters. If a file is smaller than 4096 bytes, then we have wasted space (which we have to just accept because most of the time this wont happen)

FAT Types

• FAT16
• FAT32
• exFAT

Areas

• System area: stores volume boot record and FAT tables
• Data area: stores root directory and files

Concepts

• Boot Record
• File Allocation Table
• FAT Data Area
• FAT Data Recovery
• FIle Slack