Subj : Re: filesystems
To   : comp.programming
From : robertwessel2@yahoo.com
Date : Wed Oct 05 2005 11:32 pm


Bill Cunningham wrote:
> > In either case, once you get the clusters repacked and repositioned as
> > appropriate, you have to adjust all the directory entries on the volume
> > to use the "new" cluster numbers, rebuild the new format FATs, and
> > rebuild the reserved area at the beginning of the disk to match the new
> > format.
>
>     So if I used a partion manager, specifically linux's fdisk. And changed
> a fat32 partition's signature to that of fat 16. What exactly is happening?
> I've been trying this and have been successful in the past now I can't seem
> to get things to work. I reboot into win98 and format the new fat16. Then
> boot with a floppy ms-dos 6.21. I can't get the system to install. into 1st
> or 2nd partition on the HD. DOS should be able to format a fat 16 partition
> using it's 16 bit format command.
> But it says it can't access the partition.


OK, the signature in the partition table has little to do with the
format of the volume, in fact fdisk does no formatting at all, and the
FAT12/16/32 determination doesn't happen until you format the
partition.  The signature does (occasionally) have to match the
contents of the partition.

That being said, there are several different partition types that imply
FAT16 - 4, 6 and 14 come immediately to mind, but I think DOS 6 will
only recognize 4 and 6.  Further, DOS is likely to spit up if you try
to feed it  a partition bigger than about 2GB, tagged as FAT16 or not.

.