>
> You can do both on the same copy of Windows 95, but it's weird.
>
It's not wierd at all.
> The FAT32 aware fdisk give you a cryptic prompt when it starts, I don't
> know the exact wording but it's not 100% clear. Answer yes to this
> prompt and any new drives you create will be FAT32, answer no and
> they'll be FAT16. (FAT12 is still used on really small partitions, I
> think...)
>
If you say yes to the support big disks question (format FAT32), you get
the partitions taged as type 0x0b, as apposed to normal when you get type
0x06 (DOS 16-bit >=32M) or 0x04 (DOS 16-bit <32M), or 0x01 (DOS 12-bit
FAT) on really small disks (I assume it'll back off to 0x04 regardless of
"big disk support").
> Just remove the partition, exit fdisk, answer the prompt as NO, and
> create a new one as FAT16. The 'format' command will check to see the
> partition type and format it accordingly.
>
You can use linux fdisk you can just tag type 0x04 (fdisk /dev/disk, t, 4,
w) and then reformat with mkdosfs, dos format, or windows. You can tag it
anything, even though fdisk (I have v2.1) dosn't know 0x0b is FAT32 yet,
it'll still let you tag with that.
> There WILL be an official FAT16 -> FAT32 conversion utility from
> Microsoft, but it won't ship until Winhell 97. (Which might not get here
> until 98 :) )
>
Or you can buy a disk management tool like partition magic from power
quest (50 UKP+tax); which can resize partitions, convert partitions, ...
Works with Dos, Win, Win95, WinNT, OS/2, ...
(Don't have anything to do with it/them, or even own a copy, so I'm going
on reviews).
> >
> > Is there a reason that FAT32 doesn't work with the VFAT fstype, other than
> > that support hasn't been added yet?
>
> I thought (maybe incorrectly) that FAT32 has some sort of internal VFAT
> that doesn't make it compatible with VFAT for 16 and 12 bit systems.
> Both the 16 and 12 bit versions of FAT are nearly identical and all the
> structs are laid out the same. Looking at the VFAT struct included in
> the documentation, it wouldn't support FAT32 out of the box.
>
> I don't have the FAT32 structure to look at, so I really don't know if
> it has built-in VFAT, or not.
>
FAT32 is a way of formating the disk, a lot like FAT16, but less wasteful
(ie you get to use smaller clusters on a disk, when compared to FAT16).
AFAIK you still get to use the VFAT cludges with FAT32 ;).
> My GUESS is that if VFAT support would work for FAT32, it'll wait until
> FAT32 is officially in the kernel. (It might be in the 2.1.x series... I
> didn't bother checking that, either.)
>
There is a FAT32 patch somewhere, but I hurd it didn't patch in very
easly (it's also got CD long filename support MS style in).
Bryn
--
PGP key pass phrase forgotten, \ Overload -- core meltdown sequence
again :( and I don't care ;) | initiated.
/ This space is intentionally left
| blank, apart from this text ;-)
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