Hi Christopher, > I sent those to the list because they come with source code as specified > on the web page, I will check them out later this week. i suspect fat32 > is just 32bit sector index to allow larger drive partitions (8gb) and LFNs.
LFN are already (supposed to be) supported by FreeDOS DEFRAG. They are not specific to FAT32. You are half-right about the "sector index": FAT16 means 16 bit cluster numbers, while FAT32 means 32 bit, so you can have more than 65500 clusters with FAT32. Four of the 32 bits are reserved, but you still have enough clusters in "FAT28". With FAT16, you would need 32kB cluster size for 2 GB partitions, which is not efficient, so basically FAT32 is better even for 0.5 GB partitions (as long as you do not have to use FAT16 for compatibility reasons or similar). The 8 GB limit is another story: For harddisks with more than 8 GB size, you need LBA (linear sector number) adressing, because CHS (cylinder / head / sector) adresses get incompatible with a lot of software if above 1024 / 255 / 63. MS DOS 6 neither supports LBA nor FAT32, so in MS DOS, you can have at most 2 GB per drive letter and at most the first 8 GB of the physical harddisk in use. Neither MS DOS 7 nor FreeDOS have those limitations :-). > >>http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/info/defrag.shtml > >Win32 console program, open source copyrighted freeware, read license. read license! > >>http://www.whitneyfamily.org/Hacks/?item=Defrag > >WinXP/2003 only, as far as I can tell. This one is slow because it > >compacts data repeatedly to get big enough consecutive empty areas... That one is both slow and depending on WinXP/2003 drivers. The easiest solution for now is to add FAT32 support to FreeDOS DEFRAG, but that can be very complicated if you try to keep DEFRAG 8086 compatible. If you compile with a DOS extender, a 386 CPU will be required, but DEFRAG would be able to process big data structures "easily" (if enough RAM free). It would really be cool if somebody knew a LINUX tool to DEFRAG FAT32 partitions - then we can compile a DOS version of that one with DJGPP. Eric ------------------------------------------------------- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest & candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=6595&alloc_id=14396&op=click _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
