A computer issue, how should I deal with this? Best solution?

Doug Sutherland doug at proficio.ca
Sat Jun 23 00:31:41 EDT 2007


Well its all spelled out on the microsoft site
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/118335

The 2-GB partition limit is imposed by the maximum number of clusters 
and the largest cluster size supported by the FAT file system. The FAT 
file system is limited to 65,525 clusters. The size of a cluster must be a 
power of 2 and less than 65,536 bytes--this results in a maximum cluster 
size of 32,768 bytes (32K). Multiplying the maximum number of clusters 
(65,525) by the maximum cluster size (32,768) equals 2 GB. 

This is just like that 32768 number just discussed, it is FAT16 because
it's 16-bit addessing (2 to the power of 16). Sixteen bits times the max
number of clusters is 2GB.

>From The FAT16 Partition Size (2.00 GB / 2.15 GB) Barrier

If you put a hard disk over 2 GB into a machine that is using regular 
FAT (16-bit FAT) under DOS, Windows 3.x or the first version of 
Windows 95, you can use all of it--assuming that you aren't limited by 
one of the other BIOS-related barriers mentioned in adjacent sections. 
However, to access the full contents of the disk, you must partition it
into multiple peices.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/sizeGB2-c.html

Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2 (OSR2) and Windows 98 support 
two new partition types (0B and 0C) to support the FAT32 file system. 
That isn't really DOS ... it's Win9x OSR2. DOS did not support FAT32.
It only supported FAT16. If you make a bootable disk from Win95
OSR2 or Win98, that's not DOS.

  -- Doug




More information about the Speakup mailing list