PartitionMagic and FAT32

[Candice Steelman]

One of your usenet members contacted me and
told me there was a raging discussion on FAT32
on three newsgroups.
I don't mean to be intrusive, but he suggested
I let you know what PartitionMagic does in regards
to FAT32. (He said you'd appreciate it . . . )

The scenario we think will happen is that a user
will purchase a new large hard drive. The salesperson
will tell him/her that it's preloaded with Windows 95.
Great! But the salesperson may not know to tell him
that Windows 95 sits on a FAT32 partition. If the
user then tries to install his existing 16 bit utilities,
he'll be unsuccessful.

So, he can use PartitionMagic to shrink the FAT32 partition,
create a FAT16 partition and install the utilities. He/she
can also reinstall the old Windows 95 version on a FAT16 partition
if he wants. Now the utilities can be read by both versions.

PartitionMagic will convert FAT16 to FAT 32 and back again.
You can convert your existing FAT16 to FAT32, but without the
operating system that reads the file system, it won't do any
good. (It's the same as if you converted FAT to HPFS. Without
OS/2, what's the point?)

Yes, FAT32 goes beyond the 2GB partition boundary. Yes, it uses
4K clusters on today's sized drives. But the vast majority of
the installed base out there is going to need to use a combination
of FAT32 and FAT16 for a while -- so that DOS, NT, OS/2, Linux
can recognize it.

And, personally, until FAT32 is used in a wide variety of
situations, I'd want to have a complete back up of my work
on FAT16. I'd hate to get a few weeks down the road and
find a serious incompatibility. Again, that's my feeling,
and not necessarily my company's viewpoint.

I hope this information was helpful.

Candice