FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32įile systems divide the storage space on a drive into virtual compartments known as clusters, maintain an index of where individual files are located and of available free space. So what are the differences between file systems and which should you choose. Today there are lots of different file systems in use with the choices available depending on the operating system you’re using and the type of drive your formatting.įor example, in Windows OS if you want to format the SSD you’ll be able to choose between NTFS or exFAT file systems, whereas in Linux if you want to format the USB flash drive the file system options would be fat32 NTFS or ext4. It is applied when you format a drive or partition. File system is a standard for organizing data on a storage device like a hard drive or a solid state drive.
