Managing the Slack Space Trade-off in MS-DOS FAT16
Choosing the right cluster size in MS-DOS FAT16 is a balance between disk performance and wasted slack space. Learn how to calculate waste and pick the right format.
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msdosThe Cost of Capacity: Understanding FAT16 Cluster Slack
Explore the engineering trade-offs of MS-DOS FAT16, specifically how cluster sizing affects disk capacity versus internal fragmentation and slack space.
MS-DOS 6.22 RESTORE attribute persistence across differing FAT disk formats
The BACKUP and RESTORE utilities in MS-DOS 6.22 are used to archive file data and directory structures into sequential .BAK files. While these tools maintain standard file metadata, behavior varies when restoring archives to disks with different FAT sizes (such as transitioning from 16-bit to 32-bit FAT). There is uncertainty regarding how the RESTORE comman