msdos/vfat

Rum · 07-02-2002, 03:54 AM

Some questions regd msdos/vfat filesystems in linux:

1. Are msdos and vfat types same or different?
If different, what is that difference?
(ie., when can I say 'mount -t msdos and when mount -t vfat?)

2. Does v in vfat stand for 'virtual'? If yes, what is virtual about
it? The underlying FS is afterall FAT (16 or 32).

thanks

dorward · 07-02-2002, 04:41 AM

(1) msdos is FAT (FAT16) as used by MS DOS and early versions of Win95. vfat is FAT32 as used by later versions of Win95 and the subsequent Windows releases (that don't use NTFS). It has additional features such as >2G partition sizes and long file names.

(2) I don't know, but I would guess its a joke "Very FAT".

Rum · 07-02-2002, 11:58 PM

So can I use vfat type to mount both the FAT file systems?

dorward · 07-03-2002, 06:02 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Rum
So can I use vfat type to mount both the FAT file systems?

I don't know, and wouldn't want to try to mouse a FAT16 drive as FAT32. FAT16 file systems are really rather rare these days though.

(NB: You can't build a kernel without msdos but with vfat support)

Lucas Malor · 11-05-2014, 06:25 AM

Excuse me for necroposting, but this is the first result if you search "vfat msdos" in Google, so I think it's relevant.

VFAT stands for Virtual FAT. It's not a different fs but an extension to all FAT fs systems to allow long filenames: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Al...e#Nomenclature

replica9000 · 11-05-2014, 10:02 AM

This has got to be a necrobumping record!