


To protect the volume, two copies of the table are kept, in case one becomes damaged. The FAT file system is named for its method of organization, the file allocation table, which resides at the beginning of the volume. The File Allocation Table (FAT) file system is a simple file system originally designed for small disks and simple folder structures. Originally designed in 1977 for use on floppy disks with Microsoft Disk BASIC interpreter, FAT was soon adapted and used almost universally on hard disks throughout the DOS and Windows 9x eras for two decades.Īs disk drives evolved, the capabilities of the file system have been extended accordingly, resulting in three major file system variants: FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32. Some information raised during preparation of GCFA examįAT, or File Allocation Table, is a file system that is designed to keep track of allocation status of clusters on a hard drive.
