FAT and Its Variants
FAT is one of the oldest filesystems in common use today. Poked, prodded, tweaked, and mutated over the years, FAT endures in part because Microsoft simply offers nothing better on its Windows 9x OSs and partly because of its huge installed base. FAT is used not just on hard disks, but on floppies and other removable media (CD-ROMs are one major exception).
From Floppies to Hard Disks: FAT's Long Tenure
FAT traces its heritage back to 1981, with critical concepts dating back even earlier. At that time, hard disks were luxurious extravagances, at least for personal computers. Floppy disks with well under 1MB capacity were considered huge in the small computer industry. For that medium, FAT is a reasonable filesystem. The ...
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