As shown in Figure 12 - 1, FAT volume layout a FAT volume (i.e., a logical disk) contains several areas:
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- Reserved area. The reserved area includes the boot sector, which contains basic format information, like the number of sectors in the volume.
- File allocation table area. The FAT file system is named after the file allocation table, a large table with one entry for each cluster in the volume. This area must contain at least one FAT area; for redundancy, it may also contain one or more additional FAT areas.
- Root directory area. FAT 12 and FAT 16 volumes contain a fixed amount of space for the root directory, In FAT32 volumes, there is no area reserved for the root directory; the root directory is instead stored in a fixed location in the data area.
- Data area. The data area contains files and directories. A directory (or folder) is a special type of file.
FAT supports only four attributes for its files and directories: Read-Only, Hidden, System, and Archive.