Understanding FAT32 Filesystems
This page is intended to help you understand how to access data on Microsoft FAT32 filesystems, commonly used on hard drives ranging in size from 500 megs to hundreds of gigabytes. FAT is a relatively simple and unsophisticated filesystem that is understood by nearly all operating systems, including Linux and MacOS, so it's usually a common choice for firmware-based projects that need to access hard drives. FAT16 and FAT12 are very similar and used on smaller disks. This page will concentrate on FAT32 only (to keep it simple), and briefly mention where these other two are different.
The official FAT specification is available from Microsoft, complete with a software "license agreement". Saddly, the document from Microsoft is hard to read if you do not already understand the FAT filesystem structure, and it lacks information about disk partitioning which also must be dealt with to properly use standard hard drives. While you may find the Microsoft spec useful, this page is meant to "stand alone"... and you can simply read it without suffering through 3 pages of legalese!
However, this page will intentionally "gloss over" many small details and omit many of the finer points, in an attempt to keep it simple and easy to read for anyone faced with learning FAT32 without any previous exposure.
