CODEWITHSUNDEEP
fat32fat
Den
Den

Reputation: 614

What is the use of FAT32 reserved sectors?

I know sector 0 is mostly used for loading the operating system. Some windows versions have bootloadres bigger than 1 sector and use sector 1 and 2 as well. On sector 6 up to 8 is often a backup of the sectors 0-2. But what is the rest for? Why is the default in many formating tools 32 reserved sectors?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 2410

Answers (2)

Rustam Gadeev
Rustam Gadeev

Reputation: 61

actually FAT32 boot sector have backup copy starting with 6 sectors so in total 12 sectors. AND FAT32 boot sector continues on 13 sector. So minimum is 13 sectors. Then formatting tool wants to align first cluster with 1MB boundary, so amount of reserved sectors can be very different due to different amount of FAT sectors. For HDD 4K boundary is enough, but some SSD can work faster with 1MB boundary. At least Windows7 formats with 1MB aligning.

Upvotes: 5

Paul V
Paul V

Reputation: 123

Some file systems may want a specific alignment of data and therefor will increase the number of reserved sectors to meet that alignment.

Upvotes: 1

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