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OfflineDrink_Punk_Soda
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Windows 95 HDD format question
    #5024213 - 12/06/05 03:50 PM (18 years, 5 months ago)

Hey gang.  I'm up for a tech support interview, and I'm going over a couple of sample evaluation questions.  I really don't know the answer to this one- I'm thinking it has something to do with FAT16 vs. FAT32, but I'm not really sure.  Here's the question:

"There were many complaints when Windows 95 came out about how it wasted a lot of disk space.  The solution, we heard, was to physically partition the disk into two or more drives.  How did that accomplish anything?  Does Windows 98 or Windows 2000 use space more efficiently?"

If anyone knows anything about this, I'd really appreciate some input.

I'm wondering if the answer is just that the early releases of 95 couldn't handle bigger drives, so partitioning them allowed use of the full drive?  I know Win98 and up could use FAT32, which supported larger single drives...  :confused:


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Kumbayah my lord, Kumbayah...

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Invisiblesupercollider
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Re: Windows 95 HDD format question [Re: Drink_Punk_Soda]
    #5026521 - 12/06/05 11:18 PM (18 years, 5 months ago)

You pretty much answered your own question. The original FAT file system couldn't handle more than a 2 gig partition, so big drives had to be split up in multiple parts. FAT32 solved this, and also was more efficient because it stored files in smaller chunks, thus wasting less space when dealing with small files.


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OfflineSeussA
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Re: Windows 95 HDD format question [Re: supercollider]
    #5027384 - 12/07/05 06:18 AM (18 years, 5 months ago)

> FAT32 solved this, and also was more efficient because it stored files in smaller chunks, thus wasting less space when dealing with small files

This is true in spirit, but technically inaccurate.

The FAT file system uses a File Allocate Table (hence the name) to record the starting cluster of each file. A FAT16 filesystem uses 16-bit pointers in the file allocation table, thus it can only address 65,536 clusters. A FAT16 file system can use a single 512-byte sector as an entire cluster. However, with 65K clusters at 512-bytes per cluster we get a 32K disk, which isn't of much use.

Edit: Actually, there are a few "marker" values in the FAT, so a FAT16 can't really use all 65,536 possible 16-bit values as cluster addresses. Some values like 0xffff and 0xfffe has special meaning, such as empty or bad cluster, etc.

Edited by Seuss (12/07/05 06:21 AM)

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OfflineRuNE
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Re: Windows 95 HDD format question [Re: supercollider]
    #5027398 - 12/07/05 06:26 AM (18 years, 5 months ago)

You sure about that?

Can win95 even be installed on a FAT16 partition?

Does'nt it have something to do with cluster sizes?  IE: larger partitions have larger cluster sizes.  Making 2 partitions would (automaticaly) create smaller cluster sizes, thus reducing wasted space from the hundreds of small windows system files.

You can find these answers on a quick google search, here, read this, especialy the last paragraph. 
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/partCluster-c.html

If you want to understand it better, read the whole article.

:sun:


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OfflineSeussA
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Re: Windows 95 HDD format question [Re: RuNE]
    #5027426 - 12/07/05 06:54 AM (18 years, 5 months ago)

> Can win95 even be installed on a FAT16 partition?

It can. It can even boot from a FAT12 file system, though a FAT12 isn't large enough to hold much more than the boot files.

> Does'nt it have something to do with cluster sizes?

There were many limiting factors on older hard drive technology. There were BIOS limits resulting in 512MB or 2GB drives. There were also file system (FAT12/FAT16) limits that resulting in a lot of wasted space due to large block sizes (clusters) or the inability to address the entire disk.

> Making 2 partitions would (automaticaly) create smaller cluster sizes, thus reducing wasted space from the hundreds of small windows system files.

I am guessing that what you say is probably the answer they are looking for. Basically, a cluster is your smallest file allocation size. If your cluster size is 16K, and you have a 1K file, then you waste 15K when you write the file to disk. With lots and lots of little files, something windows is famous for, you can loose a huge amount of disk space in this manner.

The cluster size is determined by the partition size and the number of available entries in the FAT. With the FAT16 filesystem, you would divide the size of the partition by aprox 65,000 to determine the number of bytes in each cluster (you would further divide by 513-bytes to determine the number of clusters). The smaller the partition, the smaller the cluster size resulting in better fitting files (less waste).

Nothing comes for free. Smaller cluster sizes result in a larger filesystem overhead (more calculations to address the data because the data is spread over more small clusters rather than a few large clusters) thus file system read/write efficiency goes down.

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OfflineRuNE
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Re: Windows 95 HDD format question [Re: Seuss]
    #5027458 - 12/07/05 07:21 AM (18 years, 5 months ago)

I read your first reply, and then saw a bunch of text under and my first thought was 'fuck here we go, seuss is about to make me into a tool.'

Good to know i wasn't talking out of my ass.  :lol:

But i did learn something new, i never knew about the lowered read/write efficiency rates with smaller sizes.  I guess this doesnt matter too much nowadays tho with the newer technology.

:sun:


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OfflineSeussA
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Re: Windows 95 HDD format question [Re: RuNE]
    #5027602 - 12/07/05 09:07 AM (18 years, 5 months ago)

> But i did learn something new, i never knew about the lowered read/write efficiency rates with smaller sizes. I guess this doesnt matter too much nowadays tho with the newer technology.

Actually, it is still a factor today. File systems, such as the ReiserFS can store multiple file fragements in a single "cluster" (block). This gives them the benefits of large block sizes while mostly avoiding the losses from small files.


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OfflineKungFu_Shaman
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Re: Windows 95 HDD format question [Re: Seuss]
    #5033749 - 12/08/05 11:36 AM (18 years, 5 months ago)

your mom's a partitioned drive


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Feel the wrath of Skeletor's breakfast burrito!

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OfflineSeussA
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Re: Windows 95 HDD format question [Re: KungFu_Shaman]
    #5033803 - 12/08/05 11:49 AM (18 years, 5 months ago)

This is science and tech, not OTD.  Please refrain from going off topic.  Actually, my Mother is dead, pushing up flowers and feeding bugs, not a partitioned drive.  It isn't wise to poke at the admin... we have bigger sticks to hit back with than most.  :grin:


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OfflineDrink_Punk_Soda
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Re: Windows 95 HDD format question [Re: Seuss]
    #5033842 - 12/08/05 11:59 AM (18 years, 5 months ago)

That reply wasn't aimed at you- KF_S is a friend of mine.  Still learning to use the Reply button.  :wink:


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Kumbayah my lord, Kumbayah...

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OfflineSeussA
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Re: Windows 95 HDD format question [Re: Drink_Punk_Soda]
    #5033879 - 12/08/05 12:14 PM (18 years, 5 months ago)

> That reply wasn't aimed at you- KF_S is a friend of mine. Still learning to use the Reply button.

No worries... I make the same mistake all the time... hence the :grin: that came with my post.  :wink:


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OfflineRuNE
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Re: Windows 95 HDD format question [Re: Seuss]
    #5035059 - 12/08/05 05:10 PM (18 years, 5 months ago)

You gotta admit it was pretty outta the blue.  :lol:


Anyway, i never even heard about ReiserFS, what OS can it be run on?  I guess it requires special drives?  Sounds sorta pricy.


:sun:


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OfflineSeussA
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Re: Windows 95 HDD format question [Re: RuNE]
    #5037861 - 12/09/05 05:03 AM (18 years, 5 months ago)

ReiserFS is opensource. I have only seen it running under linux, but it may support others as well. See http://www.namesys.com/ for details.


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Invisiblesupercollider
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Re: Windows 95 HDD format question [Re: RuNE]
    #5044470 - 12/10/05 01:59 PM (18 years, 5 months ago)

No special drives needed for ReiserFS. I have it on my desktop PC running gentoo linux. It's as un-pricey as they come :smile:


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InvisibleLe_Canard
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Re: Windows 95 HDD format question [Re: Seuss]
    #5046463 - 12/10/05 11:57 PM (18 years, 5 months ago)

Fascinating stuff. I always wondered about FAT16 vs. Fat 32.....

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OfflineSeussA
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Re: Windows 95 HDD format question [Re: Le_Canard]
    #5051177 - 12/12/05 04:31 AM (18 years, 5 months ago)

> Fascinating stuff. I always wondered about FAT16 vs. Fat 32.....

It is a wild and crazy history... hard drives in general on the Intel platform that is. If you really want to see the negative effects of Bill Gates vision on the computing industry, this is a classic case study.


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