Lawnboy,
You are probably referring to FAT16, and yes, Microsoft ditched it a long time ago (Win 95 OSR B). Remember, FAT32 is nearly identical to FAT16, with the exception that it isn't as restricted in volume size or the # of files. FAT16 can only manage up to 65,000 files per partition.
Check the article I posted below which has a chart comparison.
Tony,
From the context of that article, it would seem that it doesn't necessarily apply to ONLY NTFS. What you posted is from a section in the article that talks about "file systems" in general.
After digging around some more, I found this article:
[blue]"NTFS works and works and is fragmented - even in the case of free space is far from exhausting. This is promoted by the strange algorithm of finding free space for file storage...It is impossible to say that NTFS prevents file fragmentation. On the contrary it fragments them with pleasure. NTFS fragmentation can surprise any person familiar with file system operation in half a year of work."[/blue]
That is about as in-depth as most would care to go. It's even a bit hard to read at times, but then again, I don't think English is Dmitrey Mikhailov's first language!
Here's another good one:
The main differences I'm seeing with NTFS over FAT is more effective searching capabilities which are less susceptible to fragmentation. From what I've read, NTFS doesn't necessarily try to keep files from fragmenting. It just makes sure that data is written in such a way that it doesn't hit search performance by much. In addition, NTFS has better "fault tolerance" than FAT when a file is being written or moved into a bad sector on the disk.
~cdogg
"
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
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