Due to the widespread use of FAT formatted media, many operating systems provide support for FAT through official or third party file system handlers. For example, OS2, GNULinux, Free. BSD and Be. OS provide built in support for FAT, even though they also support more sophisticated file systems such as ext. Mac OS 9 and mac. OS support FAT file systems on volumes other than the boot disk. Amiga. OS supports FAT through the Cross. DOS package. For many purposes, the NTFS file system is superior to FAT in terms of features and reliability its main drawbacks are its complexity and the size overhead for small volumes as well as the very limited support by anything other than the NT based versions of Windows, since the exact specification is a trade secret of Microsoft. The availability of NTFS 3. G since mid 2. 00. NTFS support in Unix like operating systems, considerably alleviating this concern. It is still not possible to use NTFS in DOS like operating systems without third party drivers, which in turn makes it difficult to use a DOS floppy for recovery purposes. Microsoft provided a Recovery Console to work around this issue, but for security reasons it severely limited what could be done through the Recovery Console by default. The movement of recovery utilities to boot CDs based on Bart. PE, Linux with NTFS 3. G, or Win. PE is eroding this drawback, but the complexity of NTFS prevents its implementation in light weight operating systems or most embedded systems. The DCF file system adopted by almost all digital cameras since 1. FAT1. 2, FAT1. 6, FAT3. FAT mandatory for its physical layer in order to maximize platform interoperability. These standards cover FAT1. FAT1. 6 with only short 8. VFAT are partially patented. In contrast to this, Microsoft typically no longer distinguishes between all three of them since the introduction of FAT3. FAT1. 2 and FAT1. This can sometimes lead to confusion if the actual type of the file system used is not mentioned or cannot be explicitly specified e. While technically the newer variant with 3. Volumes utilizing VFAT long filenames can be read also by operating systems not supporting the VFAT extension, for as long as they support the underlying file system. Yet another cause for misconceptions stems from some apparent redundancy and possible ambiguity in the definition of FAT volumes. The general type of file system FAT1. FAT1. 6 or FAT3. 2 is determined by the width of the cluster entries in the FAT. Specific threshold values for the amount of clusters. Even though other properties such as the size of the volume, the count of sectors, the BPB format, the file system name in an EBPB, or in case of partitioned media the used partition ID may often seem to be well suited distinguishing criteria as well, they cannot reliably be used to derive the file system type from in all scenarios. The FAT file system was also utilized in Microsofts MDOSMIDAS. The Standalone Disk BASIC version supported three FATs. Reportedly, MIDAS was also prepared to support 1. FAT variants. While the size of directory entries was 1. Standalone Disk BASIC. PC DOS 1. 0, 3. 2 byte directory entries, 1 reserved sector1. MS DOS 1. 2. 5, 3. Partition identifier. MBREBR FAT1. 2 0x. BDP EBD0. A0. A2 B9. E5 4. 43. 3 8. 7C0 6. B6. B7. 26. 99. C7. Limits. Max. Paterson also increased the nine character 6. The format used in Microsoft Standalone Disk BASICs 8 bit file system precursor was not supported by QDOS. By August 1. 98. 0, QDOS had been renamed into 8. DOS already. Later in 1. DOS evolved into Microsofts MS DOS and IBMPC DOS. FAT1. 2 was used by several manufacturers with different physical formats, but a typical floppy disk at the time was 5. Ki. B for both the system areas and files. The FAT1. 2 limitations exceeded this capacity by a factor of ten or more. The 3. 2 Mi. B limit was later circumvented using logical sectored FATs with logical sector sizes larger than 5. OEM versions of MS DOS 3. FAT1. 6B became available with DOS 3. By convention, all the control structures were organized to fit inside the first track, thus avoiding head movement during read and write operations, although this varied depending on the manufacturer and physical format of the disk. A limitation which was not addressed until much later with FAT3. The DOS formatting tool rejected such disks completely. Tomtom Per Windows Ce 6 Download© 2017