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I am somewhat of an expert (PhD) about this topic. I came to this article in search of technical details about FAT16B. I agree that the article is overly long, but it is organized well enough and it contains much useful information.
My problem about the article is in its 'foreground' layer of writing. It is among the most difficult pieces I've had to parse on Wikipedia or elsewhere. One small example: "... originally had a maximum power-of-two value of 64"; this could be stated simply as, "... originally had a maximum value of 64." If the fact that 64 is a power of 2 were important in-context (which it isn't), the author should have started a new sentence to explain that point.
A longer example that I find difficult to parse: "On unpartitioned media the volume's number of hidden sectors is zero and therefore LSN and LBA addresses become the same for as long as a volume's logical sector size is identical to the underlying medium's physical sector size."
And here's an annoyingly long run-on sentence: "While the design of the FAT file system does not cause any organizational overhead in disk structures or reduce the amount of free storage space with increased amounts of fragmentation, as it occurs with external fragmentation, the time required to read and write fragmented files will increase as the operating system will have to follow the cluster chains in the FAT (with parts having to be loaded into memory first in particular on large volumes) and read the corresponding data physically scattered over the whole medium reducing chances for the low-level block device driver to perform multi-sector disk I/O or initiate larger DMA transfers, thereby effectively increasing I/O protocol overhead as well as arm movement and head settle times inside the disk drive."
I don't wish to be overly critical, since the article has much of value to offer. But it strikes me that whoever was the principal author(s) had little training in expository writing. I do not have time to edit the piece myself, but it really needs a good editor.
Neumation scribe ( talk) 09:10, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
"I do not have time to edit the piece myself", so telling him to "sofixit" seems kind of rude. He also said
it really needs a good editor, so maybe a more appropriate response would be to advertise the need for a good editor to help. I also point out below that this issue remains unresolved, and I think that has a lot to do with this degenerating into the RfC below. Wbm1058 ( talk) 14:39, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
I have closed The RfC per continued discussion here and the request at WP:ANRFC. You are correct that I find no consensus; what I do find is a seemingly unresolved, but fundamental, difference of opinion between two editors. I would council that any further differences of opinion between the same parties should be pursued via WP:DRN. Bellerophon talk to me 18:19, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
The information on the FATX epoch is somewhat confusing. I cannot tell if "in FATX, the epoch is 2000. On the Xbox 360, the epoch is 1980," is meaning to say that FATX itself uses an epoch of 2000 but on the 360 is modified to use an epoch of 1980. I used to reverse engineer and write applications for modifying the contents FATX-formatted devices, and these applications displayed timestamps fine with an epoch year of 1980. Here's a link to one of my very old project's code, showing that the year is given as timestamp year value + 1980 ( user images show valid dates as well). Is it acceptable to just remove the part I quoted above since FATX is only used on the Xbox 360, and the epoch does not differ from normal FAT?
Landaire ( talk) 23:00, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
The right hand summary box does not contain size limits for FAT16 This is commonly known as 2GB with 32kB clusters
The value given for "Max. number of files" "65,536 for 32 KB clusters" cannot be correct
According to https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/118335 the "The FAT file system is limited to 65,525 clusters." A usable default format must reserve a number of units for root directory entries etc. The summary box for FAT states a more credible limit "FAT16: 65,460 for 32 KB clusters" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.13.252.157 ( talk • contribs) 08:38, July 31, 2015 (UTC)
thereby blowing up dimensions, is probably not meant to be in this article. can someone fix this??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.165.131.74 ( talk • contribs) 00:39, June 13, 2015 (UTC)
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in the section overview: concepts the article contains the line 'each of these variants is still[when?] in use'. The [when] tag does not seem appropriate as that is clarified in the section FAT12. The quickest way to find the information is to search for 2.88. As a side note, even though actual floppies are becoming rare, the use of floppy images for CD booting, virtual machines, network booting, and other uses keeps fat12 in use. For references for current usage look at syslinux's memdisk, vbox (or any other virtual machine), and mkisofs's man page. 71.212.217.88 ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:53, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
quote " Directory entries are 64 bytes in size instead of the normal 32 bytes. " then links back to FAT which says the entries are 8-BIT -not- BYTE
I would like some third party clarification on this, and I am not familar, but I believe the word "bytes" to be in error. It should be "bits" right?
Thank you for your time! -- 74.142.114.150 ( talk) 23:33, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
This article says the time resolution of the 'created time' is 10ms. But I found this reference on the net: https://staff.washington.edu/dittrich/misc/fatgen103.pdf which says the resolution is only 100ms. Could the figure 10ms be a mistake, arising from the actual resolution being 'tenths of a second', not 10ms?
Avl ( talk) 16:27, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
I think all the FAT patents have expired in 2011-2018:
IANAL, but these can be verified using patent databases and calculators.
2001:14BA:1AFC:72F0:0:0:0:E18 ( talk) 01:56, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
"File Allocation Table" purports to be an introductory version of "Design of the FAT file system" within the introductory article system categorized at Category:Introductory articles. But as you can see just from a glance at the article titles, it doesn't fit. It looks more like a fork to preserve overly technical information that should just be removed per WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Could we either merge or remove the hatnotes? {{u| Sdkb}} talk 21:33, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
@ Klbrain: Your close does not seem like an accurate summation of consensus. I made a precedent- and policy-based argument for merging, and another user concurred. A novice editor objected with a non-policy-based argument, and an IP editor concurred. It does not look like there is consensus to me, so I would advise leaving the discussion open. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 21:25, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Are flash file systems implemented as FAT or do they appear as FAT with respect to external APIs?
DGerman ( talk) 17:16, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
The Limits section measures clusters and sections in "KB," but there's no such unit as a "KB." There are kB (1000 bytes) and KiB (1024 bytes). Please fix that by replacing "KB" with the correct unit. 91.193.176.8 ( talk) 11:46, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
File Allocation Table article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 |
This
level-5 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||
|
Text and/or other creative content from this version of File Allocation Table was copied or moved into Design of the FAT file system with this edit on 2014-05-20. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |
I am somewhat of an expert (PhD) about this topic. I came to this article in search of technical details about FAT16B. I agree that the article is overly long, but it is organized well enough and it contains much useful information.
My problem about the article is in its 'foreground' layer of writing. It is among the most difficult pieces I've had to parse on Wikipedia or elsewhere. One small example: "... originally had a maximum power-of-two value of 64"; this could be stated simply as, "... originally had a maximum value of 64." If the fact that 64 is a power of 2 were important in-context (which it isn't), the author should have started a new sentence to explain that point.
A longer example that I find difficult to parse: "On unpartitioned media the volume's number of hidden sectors is zero and therefore LSN and LBA addresses become the same for as long as a volume's logical sector size is identical to the underlying medium's physical sector size."
And here's an annoyingly long run-on sentence: "While the design of the FAT file system does not cause any organizational overhead in disk structures or reduce the amount of free storage space with increased amounts of fragmentation, as it occurs with external fragmentation, the time required to read and write fragmented files will increase as the operating system will have to follow the cluster chains in the FAT (with parts having to be loaded into memory first in particular on large volumes) and read the corresponding data physically scattered over the whole medium reducing chances for the low-level block device driver to perform multi-sector disk I/O or initiate larger DMA transfers, thereby effectively increasing I/O protocol overhead as well as arm movement and head settle times inside the disk drive."
I don't wish to be overly critical, since the article has much of value to offer. But it strikes me that whoever was the principal author(s) had little training in expository writing. I do not have time to edit the piece myself, but it really needs a good editor.
Neumation scribe ( talk) 09:10, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
"I do not have time to edit the piece myself", so telling him to "sofixit" seems kind of rude. He also said
it really needs a good editor, so maybe a more appropriate response would be to advertise the need for a good editor to help. I also point out below that this issue remains unresolved, and I think that has a lot to do with this degenerating into the RfC below. Wbm1058 ( talk) 14:39, 30 June 2014 (UTC)
I have closed The RfC per continued discussion here and the request at WP:ANRFC. You are correct that I find no consensus; what I do find is a seemingly unresolved, but fundamental, difference of opinion between two editors. I would council that any further differences of opinion between the same parties should be pursued via WP:DRN. Bellerophon talk to me 18:19, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
The information on the FATX epoch is somewhat confusing. I cannot tell if "in FATX, the epoch is 2000. On the Xbox 360, the epoch is 1980," is meaning to say that FATX itself uses an epoch of 2000 but on the 360 is modified to use an epoch of 1980. I used to reverse engineer and write applications for modifying the contents FATX-formatted devices, and these applications displayed timestamps fine with an epoch year of 1980. Here's a link to one of my very old project's code, showing that the year is given as timestamp year value + 1980 ( user images show valid dates as well). Is it acceptable to just remove the part I quoted above since FATX is only used on the Xbox 360, and the epoch does not differ from normal FAT?
Landaire ( talk) 23:00, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
The right hand summary box does not contain size limits for FAT16 This is commonly known as 2GB with 32kB clusters
The value given for "Max. number of files" "65,536 for 32 KB clusters" cannot be correct
According to https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/118335 the "The FAT file system is limited to 65,525 clusters." A usable default format must reserve a number of units for root directory entries etc. The summary box for FAT states a more credible limit "FAT16: 65,460 for 32 KB clusters" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.13.252.157 ( talk • contribs) 08:38, July 31, 2015 (UTC)
thereby blowing up dimensions, is probably not meant to be in this article. can someone fix this??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.165.131.74 ( talk • contribs) 00:39, June 13, 2015 (UTC)
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in the section overview: concepts the article contains the line 'each of these variants is still[when?] in use'. The [when] tag does not seem appropriate as that is clarified in the section FAT12. The quickest way to find the information is to search for 2.88. As a side note, even though actual floppies are becoming rare, the use of floppy images for CD booting, virtual machines, network booting, and other uses keeps fat12 in use. For references for current usage look at syslinux's memdisk, vbox (or any other virtual machine), and mkisofs's man page. 71.212.217.88 ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:53, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
quote " Directory entries are 64 bytes in size instead of the normal 32 bytes. " then links back to FAT which says the entries are 8-BIT -not- BYTE
I would like some third party clarification on this, and I am not familar, but I believe the word "bytes" to be in error. It should be "bits" right?
Thank you for your time! -- 74.142.114.150 ( talk) 23:33, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
This article says the time resolution of the 'created time' is 10ms. But I found this reference on the net: https://staff.washington.edu/dittrich/misc/fatgen103.pdf which says the resolution is only 100ms. Could the figure 10ms be a mistake, arising from the actual resolution being 'tenths of a second', not 10ms?
Avl ( talk) 16:27, 22 January 2019 (UTC)
I think all the FAT patents have expired in 2011-2018:
IANAL, but these can be verified using patent databases and calculators.
2001:14BA:1AFC:72F0:0:0:0:E18 ( talk) 01:56, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
"File Allocation Table" purports to be an introductory version of "Design of the FAT file system" within the introductory article system categorized at Category:Introductory articles. But as you can see just from a glance at the article titles, it doesn't fit. It looks more like a fork to preserve overly technical information that should just be removed per WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Could we either merge or remove the hatnotes? {{u| Sdkb}} talk 21:33, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
@ Klbrain: Your close does not seem like an accurate summation of consensus. I made a precedent- and policy-based argument for merging, and another user concurred. A novice editor objected with a non-policy-based argument, and an IP editor concurred. It does not look like there is consensus to me, so I would advise leaving the discussion open. {{u| Sdkb}} talk 21:25, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Are flash file systems implemented as FAT or do they appear as FAT with respect to external APIs?
DGerman ( talk) 17:16, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
The Limits section measures clusters and sections in "KB," but there's no such unit as a "KB." There are kB (1000 bytes) and KiB (1024 bytes). Please fix that by replacing "KB" with the correct unit. 91.193.176.8 ( talk) 11:46, 14 November 2022 (UTC)