Can Windows XP or Windows Vista Read and Write FAT16?

Can Windows XP or Windows Vista Read and Write FAT16? As title states, can Windows Vista or Windows XP read/write FAT16 filesystems. Are there any special tricks to being able to do this without much trouble? I'm designing a hobby project and I'm trying to decided if FAT32 is worth the extra cost.
Asked by: Guest \| Views: 341

Total answers/comments: 2

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Guest [Entry]

"Yes, Windows XP and Vista can still read/write FAT16-formatted hard drives.

I have several external hard drives formatted in FAT16 and have never had a problem reading or writing to any of them with Windows XP and Windows Vista (and Windows 7).

It has become more common (again) to format drives using FAT16 so they can be used with some external devices. I use mine to plug into a DVD player with an external USB port. I still have to read/write the files from Windows XP/Vista/Win7. No problems."

Guest [Entry]

"Maximum partition size using the FAT16 file system in Windows XP

Windows XP supports the creation of primary partitions and logical drives of up to 4 gigabytes (GB) using the FAT16 file system. The maximum cluster size is 64K.

So the answer = yes for Windows XP

If you’re using Vista, here’s a gotcha.

In spite of this knowledge base article, and contrary to what it says on this Vista page, it appears impossible to format a Fat16/32 partition using Vista native GUI tools.

EDIT (25-Apr-07) : This applies to partitions larger than 32 GB in size. The GUI tools will support formatting partitions smaller than 32 GB in size. This is apparently by design. Although the maximum size of a Fat32 partition is ~8 TB, Windows formatting tools will not format large partitions."