Editing File Allocation Table (section)

==== Development ====
FAT32 was introduced with [[Windows 95]] OSR2(MS-DOS 7.1) in 1996, although reformatting was needed to use it, and [[DriveSpace 3]] (the version that came with Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows 98<!-- what about ME? -->) never supported it. [[Windows 98]] introduced a utility to convert existing hard disks from FAT16 to FAT32 without loss of data.

In the Windows NT line, native support for FAT32 arrived in [[Windows 2000]]. A free FAT32 driver for [[Windows NT 4.0]] was available from [[Winternals]], a company later acquired by Microsoft. The acquisition of the driver from official sources is no longer possible. Since 1998, Caldera's dynamically loadable [[DRFAT32]] driver could be used to enable FAT32 support in DR-DOS.<ref name="Caldera_1998_DRFAT32-RM"/><ref name="Caldera_1998_DRFAT32"/> The first version of DR-DOS to natively support FAT32 and LBA access was OEM DR-DOS 7.04 in 1999. That same year [[Intelligent Micro Software|IMS]] introduced native FAT32 support with [[REAL/32]] 7.90, and [[IBM 4690 OS]] added FAT32 support with version 2.<ref name="IBM_4690_User_Guide" /> [[Ahead Software]] provided another dynamically loadable FAT32.EXE driver for DR-DOS 7.03 with [[Nero Burning ROM]] in 2004.<!-- with copyrights 2002-2004 --> IBM introduced native FAT32 support with OEM PC DOS 7.1 in 1999.

Two partition types have been reserved for FAT32 partitions, <code>[[Partition type#PID 0Bh|0x0B]]</code> and <code>[[Partition type#PID 0Ch|0x0C]]</code>. The latter type is also named '''FAT32X''' in order to indicate usage of LBA disk access instead of CHS.<ref name="Caldera_1998_DRFAT32-RM"/><ref name="PowerQuest_1998_PQ4" /><ref name="Livingstone_1998_FAT32X" /><ref name="Duitz_2001_FAQ" /><ref name="Costanzo_1998_FAT32X" /> On such partitions, CHS-related geometry entries, namely the [[MBR partition entry|CHS sector address]]es in the MBR as well as the number of [[BPB sectors per track|sectors per track]] and the [[BPB number of heads|number of heads]] in the EBPB record, may contain no or misleading values and should not be used.<ref name="PowerQuest_1998_FAT32X" /><ref name="Duitz_2001_FAQ" /><ref name="Costanzo_1998_FAT32X" />