Reference Guide - Hard Disk Drives  A Brief History of the Hard Disk Drive Construction and Operation of the Hard Disk Drive Hard Disk Geometry and Low-Level Data Structures Hard Disk Performance, Quality and Reliability Hard Disk BIOS and Capacity Factors Hard Disk Interfaces and Configuration Hard Disk Logical Structures and File Systems Operating Systems and File Systems PC File Systems FAT FAT32 Virtual FAT (VFAT) NT File System (NTFS) Major Disk Structures and the Boot Process FAT File System Disk Volume Structures Clusters and File Allocation Partitioning, Partition Sizes and Drive Lettering Disk Partitioning and Formatting Programs Disk Compression Author: Charles M. Kozierok  The primary file system used in the vast majority of PCs is FAT. This name actually stands for file allocation table, which is one of the main logical structures that the file system uses, so it's not the best name to refer to the whole file system. FAT is used by most DOS or Windows-based PCs. It is sometimes called FAT16, in reference to its 16-bit nature, to avoid confusion with its successor, FAT32. Next: FAT32

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