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How FDISK and the Operating System Create and Allocate 129
Note that NTFS drives can be larger than FAT-16 drives and are
even more efficient than FAT-32 drives.
The default cluster sizes for FAT-16 drives under Windows NT 4.0
and Windows 2000 are the same as for Windows 9x and MS-DOS.
In addition, three more large drive sizes are supported by Windows
NT 4.0 only (see Table 4.23).
Table 4.23
NT 4.0
Additional FAT-16 Cluster Sizes Supported by Windows
Drive Capacity Size of FAT (Using FAT-16)
2048–4096MB (2–4GB) 64KB
4096–8192MB (4–8GB) 128KB
8192–16384MB (8–16GB) 256KB
How FDISK and the Operating
System Create and Allocate Drive
Letters
Two types of partitions can be created with the FDISK in Windows
9x/Me/2000/NT and MS-DOS: primary and extended. The primary
partition can be bootable and can occupy all, part, or none of a
hard disk’s capacity. If you have only one hard disk in a system and
it’s bootable, at least a portion of that drive’s partition is primary.
An extended partition is similar to a “pocket” that holds one or
more logical DOS drives inside it. Table 4.24 shows how FDISK
identifies these various disk structures as they might be found in a
typical 13GB hard disk divided into three drives—C:, D:, and E:.
Table 4.24 FDISK Primary, Extended, and Logical DOS Drives
Compared (13GB Hard Disk)
Partition Contained % of Total % of
Type Size Within Bootable? Disk Space Partition
Primary 4GB n/a Yes 32.5%
Drive C: 4GB Primary Yes 32.5% 100% of
primary
Extended 9GB n/a No 67.5%
Logical 4GB Extended No 32.5% 44.4% of
DOS drive
D: partition
extended
Logical 5GB Extended No 35.0% 55.6% of
DOS drive extended
E: partition