Simplest (practical) file system?

From: Patrick Rigney <patrick_at_evocative.com>
Date: Mon Jul 28 13:15:00 2003

> FAT16 is limited to 4G
>
> But DOS and Win9x limits it to 2147483647 (NTx permits 4G).
> The 2G limitation is due to the use of signed long ints in places that
> should have an UNSIGNED long int. Because of that, it can have files with
> a NEGATIVE size!

Fred, I think another reason for this limit is that DOS only allows the
allocation unit (cluster) size be an even power of two. That leaves out a
lot of possible values. If Bob is willing to "forgive" DOS compatibility,
he could allow any allocation unit size that fits in a byte (so 255
theoretically, but he could also choose a 16- or 32-bit factor), allowing
for a much higher limit. --Patrick
Received on Mon Jul 28 2003 - 13:15:00 BST