Description of Default Cluster Sizes for FAT32 File System

Summary

This article lists the default cluster sizes for drives using the FAT32 file system. The FAT32 file system uses smaller default cluster sizes than the FAT16 file system, resulting in a more efficient file allocation system and the conservation of drive space.

More Information

The following tables lists the default cluster sizes used by the FAT32 file system.



Partition size Cluster size
-------------------------------------
512 MB to 8,191 MB 4 KB
8,192 MB to 16,383 MB 8 KB
16,384 MB to 32,767 MB 16 KB
Larger than 32,768 MB 32 KB


Note that the FAT32 file system does not support drives smaller than 512 MB.

References

For more information about the FAT32 file system, see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

ARTICLE-ID: 154997
TITLE : Description of the FAT32 File System

ARTICLE-ID: 69912
TITLE : MS-DOS Partitioning Summary