I also noticed some confusion or mistakes in the original post...
The sizes are generally smaller in the FAT 32 vs FAT vs partition
sizes, gaining efficiency in the area with less wasted "slack" space...
It is a numbers game, with tradeoffs each way, including system
overhead, and a small performance "hit"... Think of keeping track of
all those "extra little pieces" of the same file...

I think the "phasing out" idea may be rooted in the way MS has
let "most(?)" of the major OEM licensing agreements for Win95
expire, thus forcing larger OEMs to provide a newer OS to their
customers.  ( I am aware that there are special custom configuration
"deals" still available from the corporate special build unit at DELL,
but for the "main stream" it has been basically "phased out"...)
I have no knowledge of "all" the deals MS makes with its "partners"
or especially what is now required from the smaller shops...
I have not heard if MS-DOS is still licensed (or NOT) in the same way,
but assume it may have been "phased out" in a similar manor...
Perhaps a better choice of words would be it has been "pushed(?) out"...
Hope this helps shed more light on this issue.
              Rick Glazier

> > >> FAT 16
> >A version of FAT which MS seems to be phasing out, starting with later
> >versions of Win95.  These let you choose between FAT 16 and FAT 32.
>
> FAT 16 = 16 bit. this was the original offering because DOS is a 16 bit
> operating system. It is still the one FAT that is accessible to any OS and
> I don't see it be phased out any time soon. However it does have some major
> limitations....such as a 2 GB partition size. and cluster size increases
> with partition size. A 200 meg partition has a 4k cluster size but a 2GB
> partition has  a 32k cluster size. This means that every file, no matter
> how small is written in 32k clusters. That is a lot of waste. It is not
> unusual to be wasting 700 megs on a 2 GB FAT partition. This is the space
> that compression programs like DriveSpace use to recapture hard drive space.

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