Organization of a FAT Volume

As shown in Figure - FAT volume layout a FAT volume (i.e., a logical disk) contains several areas:

1. Reserved area. The reserved area includes the boot sector, which contains basic format information, like the number of sectors in the volume.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.