AW: what's the story with the FAT32, 32GB limit ?

My explanation of yo questions:


1. FAT

Yes, it's true that

FAT32 (FAT is the FileAllocationTable, something like pointers, showing
to the real physical location 'files' are located (as you know, there
are just 0s and 1s - binary data) was originally limited to 32GB (FAT16
to 16GB), and it has got something to do with the physical design of
elder HDDs and the ability to handle the adresses, sectors, clusters
etc.). Later there were 'tricks' used to ship around those limitations
(as everybody knows, FAT was developed by Micro*** (also NTFS) and as
everybody knows, they don't know much about their own techniques (and
therefore don't give rich infos about their products ;-).


2. DOS

Bill once said (in DOS days), that noone will ever need a bigger RAM
than a few kBytes, which has been the reason for some smart programmers
to 'imitate' a bigger one (EMM386) for DOS, to have the possibilitiy
using larger Programs under DOS.


3. NTFS

And the same for NTFS:

invented by M$, designed for NT (counter player to UNIX), not readable
(except with tricky little programs) by FAT OSes like Win98, Win95, Win
1 to 3...... Because of the new technique of hiding files, crypting
files, setting access permissions of files, HDDs etc. Integrated in NTFS
there is the ACL (Access Control List), where all the permissions etc.
are written down (something like a map for your NTFS formatted HD).
File-/HD-size limits are given by the (imperfect) design and only
thinking as far as they can see (even if there's misty weather ;-)) or
simply not beeing able to create a bigger one (because of development of
technology).
So if you can read a NTFS partition on a non-NTFS OS, you need to
install (perhaps by M$-update) a program, that can decrypt the
file-system on a local computer.
And when you download a file from a NTFS server to a FAT partition?
Well, quite easy to explain: In the Network you don't have direct access
to the partition, only to the File list of the server (as I said, all
data is binary), and the server decrypts the file on his side, then
sends it to your Network Card (by IP and MAC) and your PC stores it in
the right format (because the File-System has got nothing to do with the
file itself, it only says, how and where the data is saved on disk)

As you can see, you need a bit of techniqual knowledge and 'history' of
Computers, to understand, what noone can understand at first sight. As
you can see: The one and only reason is a mix of development in key
technologies (e.g. older parts for older HDs would have been too big, to
integrate them in a 5,25" shelter).

Hope, this helped you a little, to understand, why silly things happen
in Computer industry (but also in other industries, like car. Why don't
they build economical cars? Answer:
1.They first have to sell the bad versions, to manipulate the customers
for wanting a better product, and therefore buy something new.
2. The Oil-industry wants to sell more, not less oil in a year

But don't think about that, consume!

4. Partition Magic: As you can read above, there are software tricks
used, if the hardware is limitted.
Why do you think M$ bought SysInternals???? Because they knew more
about Windows than M$ itself, and
therefore wrote better programs than M$ would ever release......

Sorry, if you can't cope with my english, but I'm german - and no, I
don't have problems to understand, what you are talking about
;-))))))))
But that's really enough for now, cheers



jameshanley39@xxxxxxxxxxx:
On Aug 14, 11:49 pm, "Paul Randall" <paulr...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<jameshanle...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:1186963038.228930.166680@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx





http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

i 've heard that when running an OS , or some OSs, like win xp,
from
that partition, there can be problems if the capacity is > 32GB

I never ran into any problems, but I went to NTFS anyway.

But what are the problems, and why ?
Or is there reason to believe there are no problems, and it's a
myth ?

Note: if no OS is on there, e.g. it's just for data, then i don't
think the 32GB thing is an issue.
i think win xp or an early edition of it didn't let you format a
fat32
partition > 32GB or something. I recall a mueller video showing
him
resizing it with Partition Magic.

(next, the 137gb limit ;-) ! )

Up until I started using Vista, I have avoided NTFS. My 300 GB
drives work
just fine formatted FAT32. I partition/format with GDisk.exe, a DOS
program
provided with Norton Ghost. W98 DOS accesses these files just fine.
Norton's DOS Disk Edit can play with the contents (master boot
record,
partition table, directory, individual file contents, or any sector
of my
choice) just the way I want it to. The applications that I use that
handle
large files automatically split files so that none has to exceed 2GB.
NTFS
is a black box which I know I will have to learn to trust. I'm not
quite
there yet.


You can access NTFS from DOS too, there are programs like NTFS Pro.
It's not a GUI shell. It's more like a TSR program, and you wouldn't
know it's there, and you can access all your drives. It does the job
properly.

I recall that it didn't let me do a virus check on an NTFS drive from
DOS though! maybe that used too much RAM or more memory than NTFS Pro
was banking on! But it's very good. There may be other free ones
(that
can read and write).

Another great alternative, and why many people don't even use that
program anymore. Is Win XP PE. booting a rubbishy version of win xp
off a CD. (win xp has no prob reading NTFS).

Maybe a linux boot disk can do it too.

All these options are easier than putting the drive in another
machine
that runs win xp or an OS that sees NTFS.

Regarding Norton DOS Disk edit. I kow I guess it lets you read/write
at the byte level, and sounds very cool. But what have/can you use it
for ?
e.g. what have you done playing with partitions ? the boot record ?
files ? at that level..






What 137 GB limit?


Win xp pre sp1 didn't let you create a partition or format, to more
than 137GB. So you had to resize it with a prog like partition magic.
.