About the FAT32 filesystem

The FAT32 file allocation table was introduced in 1996 together with the improved Windows 95 OSR2 operating system. The newly developed file system made it possible to create hard disks with larger storing capacities than its predecessor the FAT16 which allowed a maximum of 2GB of data. The FAT32 supports large amounts of data up to 2 terabytes and the space is being used more efficiently with smaller clusters.

The new filesystem made possible to relocate the root directory and the boot record has been expanded for backup purposes of critical data. The root directory can be placed anywhere on the hard drive making it more flexible.

FAT32 was developed to be compatible with the existing file architecture used by Windows’95, with data structures and API interfaces so that most applications, drivers and utilities won’t be affected and should be working properly.

Performance of most applications has also increased thanks to the new file system but there are also a few applications which encountered a slight degradation of their performance.