FAT(16) vs FAT32 ?

[mb26]

for hard drives 2GB or less, is there any real advantage of using FAT32? (/what are pros and cons of each?)

[pam123]

No there's no advantage and that's why the makers of 'embedded devices' and Microsoft ended up in court a few years back when Redmond woke up to the fact that there was still money to be made from the obsolete FAT 16.
Microsoft lost the patent claim on the grounds of "prior art".

[edfair]

This is from long ago research and the memory is dim, but if I recall correctly there was a break point difference somewhere between the two where 32 used smaller cluster sizes than 16. And if you had a partition that fit in that window the 32 cluster had less slack, so you could store some small percentage more on the 32 if what you were storing took advantage of the difference.
Whatever it was it wasn't significant enough for me to remember it.

[glc]

A 2 gig drive can hold up to 20% more with FAT32 due to cluster size differences. At 2gb, FAT16 has 32kb clusters and FAT32 has 4kb clusters.

[edfair]

Thanks, GLC. It forced me to review with a google search for "fat16 cluster size", which led to Microsoft's comparison site. It was a worthwhile view.

[pam123]

It looks like I made the same search edfair did.
Yep, good info.

[glc]

However, FAT32 has never been as stable as FAT16, there's the tradeoff.

[pam123]

Originally Posted by glc However, FAT32 has never been as stable as FAT16, there's the tradeoff.

Which explains why, if you make embedded devices, you're using FAT16.
You answered my question before I got around to asking it.

[edfair]

In theory, since FAT is nothing more than a pointing system, there shouldn't be any difference in reliability.

I don't spend enough time moving back and forth between them to make a judgement, so I defer to your experince.

But is there a possibility that the problem that appears related to FAT32 is really an underlying problem relating to more unreliable operating systems that utilize the 32 bit FAT?

[glc]

All I know is when Win95B (OSR2) came out, it offered FAT32. Many builders stayed with FAT16 with it, and we saw a lot more crashes with FAT32 than with FAT16. The forced Scandisk after improper shutdown was a new "feature" with FAT32. There also was supposedly a minor performance hit with FAT32 over FAT16, but the same is said about NTFS over FAT32.