FAT16 2G trivia (was: HH drives

Would 65535 be considered to be 65.5K here? How many bytes are in a K? M? G? The maximum size for most FAT16 partitions is 2147483647, which is 2 to the 31st power minus 1, or 2 HONEST Gigabytes (minus 1). The size limit is due to the use in MS-DOS of a long int, which is a 32 bit signed number. A long int has a range from -2147483648 to 2147483647. That was an error; they should have used a UNSIGNED long int (0 to 4294967295) The long int is also used for file size. Thus, for many versions of MS-DOS, the range of file sizes is also -2147483648 to 2147483647. One time, when the free space on one of my hard drives was getting sparse, I took a floppy disk and stepped on one of the directory entries to give it a reported file size of -2147483648. Then I tried to copy that negative 2 gig file to the hard drive. What effect should there be on free space if you add a file with a negative size? It didn't work. What was even more fun was trying to explain to the MICROS~1 "Beta team" management why things like file size should be unsigned. In NT (not sure if ALL versions), they switched from a long int to an unsigned long int (which it should have been from the get go). Because of that, a FAT16 partition in NT can be up to 2 to the 32nd power minus one, 4294967295, or FOUR HONEST/binary gigabytes (minus one byte). But those partitions are only readable by NT, since MS-DOS (and WINDOZE9x) sees them as having a negative size. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com