On 12 Apr 99, at 13:44, Rob wrote:
> I understand the differences between the two, but I am a little confused on
> some of the other issuses.
>
> I know that two computors cannot be networked one using Fat 16 and the other
> using FAT 32, but is data able to be shared by way of removable media
> (floppies, zip disks and RW CD's, etc) ?
Ummm .... no.
FAT16 and FAT32 are hard drive formats. Floppies, zip disks, and CDs
all have their own formats; the one used on floppies is kind of a
subset of FAT, but consider that a coincidence.
[I have not experimented with moving Zip disks between PC and Mac,
but most modern Macs can read and write PC-formatted floppies.]
When machines are networked, requests for files get handled by the OS
on the machine that the device is attached to. So a FAT32 hard drive
on a server is accessible to networked machines even if their OSes know
only FAT16. In general, networking hides thes differences.
> If I convert to Fat 32 at the time of fdisk/format or with
> Microsoft's conversion utility am I able to convert back with a 3rd
> party utility or do I have to have the 3rd party utility installed
> and use it to convert to Fat 32 in order to be able to convert back
> to Fat 16 if I feel like I need to?
FAT32 is FAT32 -- nothing records how it got that way. Specifically,
I have successfully used Partition Magic to convert FAT32 partitions --
created with any of Win95 OSR2, Win98, or PM itself, to FAT16, and I
would expect similar success with other tools. [I have done this for
various reasons, such as to install DriveSpace or NT (dual boot).]
David G
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