Need more hard drive space? Who doesn’t! In a recent past article I mentioned that one of the benefits of the soon to be released Windows 98 will be a converter from the inefficient FAT16 to the much enhanced FAT32 (FAT is an acronym for File Allocation Table). Quite possibly you are like I was until recently. I didn’t really know what the heck that meant, except that FAT16 wastes hard drive space. And because the prices of hard drives have dropped so rapidly lately I haven’t really cared either.

Well, I read recently that FAT32 could reduce the hard drive access time by as much as 50%, and who doesn’t want more speed. So I decided to find out what all this FAT stuff was all about and pass it along. Here it is in a nutshell.

The minimum space needed to store a file in most Windows 95-based PCs is in a 32K cluster (since most users don't bother to create or don't want small partitions on their hard drive). In Windows 98, the minimum space needed to store anything has been reduced to a 4K cluster--even with very large partitions. Based on this reduced cluster size, the average you can expect to gain is as much as 28% more hard drive space.

I recently purchased a new 6.4-gigabyte drive, which brought my total hard drive space to 10.7-gigabytes. After I installed and set up the new drive I had approximately 5 gigabytes of free space left. When I ran the FAT32 utility I found out that I could re-gain another 1 gigabyte of space already utilized.