What are the limitations of fat fat32 and ntfs?

Answer 1

FAT:The 4-GB partition limit is imposed by the maximum number of clusters and the largest cluster size supported by the FAT file system. In Windows XP, FAT16 is limited to 64K clusters. Multiply the maximum number of clusters (64k) by the maximum cluster size (64K), and the result is 4GB. In addition to Windows XP, Microsoft Windows 2000 and Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 also support FAT16 volumes up to 4GB in size.

FAT16 volumes larger than 2GB are not accessible from computers running Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Windows 98, Windows 95, or MS-DOS. The size limit for FAT16 volumes in these operating systems is 2 GB. In other words, to maintain compatibility with Windows Me, Windows 98, Windows 95, or MS-DOS, a volume cannot be larger than 2 GB. For additional information about FAT16 drive and partition size limits in Windows Me, Windows 98, Windows 95, and MS-DOS, click the article numbers below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base

FAT32:

• Clusters cannot be 64 kilobytes (KB) or larger. If clusters were 64 KB or larger, some programs (such as Setup programs) might calculate disk space incorrectly.
• A volume must contain at least 65,527 clusters to use the FAT32 file system. You cannot increase the cluster size on a volume using the FAT32 file system so that it ends up with less than 65,527 clusters.
• The maximum possible number of clusters on a volume using the FAT32 file system is 268,435,445. With a maximum of 32 KB per cluster with space for the file allocation table (FAT), this equates to a maximum disk size of approximately 8 terabytes (TB).
• The ScanDisk tool included with Microsoft Windows 95 and Microsoft Windows 98 is a 16-bit program. Such programs have a single memory block maximum allocation size of 16 MB less 64 KB. Therefore, The Windows 95 or Windows 98 ScanDisk tool cannot process volumes using the FAT32 file system that have a FAT larger than 16 MB less 64 KB in size. A FAT entry on a volume using the FAT32 file system uses 4 bytes, so ScanDisk cannot process the FAT on a volume using the FAT32 file system that defines more than 4,177,920 clusters (including the two reserved clusters). Including the FATs themselves, this works out, at the maximum of 32 KB per cluster, to a volume size of 127.53 gigabytes (GB).
• You cannot decrease the cluster size on a volume using the FAT32 file system so that the FAT ends up larger than 16 MB less 64 KB in size.
• You cannot format a volume larger than 32 GB in size using the FAT32 file system in Windows 2000. The Windows 2000 FastFAT driver can mount and support volumes larger than 32 GB that use the FAT32 file system (subject to the other limits), but you cannot create one using the Format tool. This behavior is by design. If you need to create a volume larger than 32 GB, use the NTFS file system instead.

NTFS:File NamesFile names are limited to 255 UTF-16 code words. Certain names are reserved in the volume root directory and cannot be used for files. These are: $MFT, $MFTMirr, LogFile, Volume, AttrDef, . (dot), Bitmap, Boot,BadClus, $Secure, Upcase, and Extend; . (dot) and $Extend are both directories; the others are files. The NT kernel limits full paths to 32,767 UTF-16 code words.Maximum Volume SizeIn theory, the maximum NTFS volume size is 264−1 clusters. However, the maximum NTFS volume size as implemented in Windows XP Professional is 232−1 clusters. For example, using 64 KB (64 × 1024 bytes) clusters, the maximum Windows XP NTFS volume size is 256 TB (256 × 10244 bytes) minus 64 KB. Using the default cluster size of 4 KB, the maximum NTFS volume size is 16 TB minus 4 KB. (Both of these are vastly higher than the 128 GB (128 × 10243 bytes) limit lifted in Windows XP SP1.) Because partition tables on master boot record (MBR) disks only support partition sizes up to 2 TB, dynamic or GPT volumes must be used to create NTFS volumes over 2 TB. Booting from a GPT volume to a Windows environment requires a system with EFI and 64-bit support.[44]Maximum File SizeAs designed, the maximum NTFS file size is 16 EB (16 × 10246 bytes) minus 1 KB (1024 bytes) or 18,446,744,073,709,550,592 bytes. As implemented, the maximum NTFS file size is 16 TB (16 × 10244 bytes) minus 64 KB (64 × 1024 bytes) or 17,592,185,978,880 bytes.Alternate Data StreamsWindows system calls may handle alternate data streams. Depending on the operating system, utility and remote file system, a file transfer might silently strip data streams. A safe way of copying or moving files is to use the BackupRead and BackupWrite system calls, which allow programs to enumerate streams, to verify whether each stream should be written to the destination volume and to knowingly skip offending streams.