Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 2nd Jul 2009 16:17 UTC, submitted by lemur2
The FAT file system is the file system used by MS-DOS and earlier versions of Windows. It's a relatively simple and straightforward file system, supported by just about any operating system, making it the favoured file system on memory cards and the like. FAT is an ECMA and ISO standard, but these only apply for FAT12 and FAT16 without support for long file names, and therein lies a problem.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
If the name fits in the 8.3 format - it is stored as is, without any longname/VFAT data.
If the name is a long filename - the 8.3. name is filled with bogus data and the long filename is saved normally.
This works because when a long filename is present Windows will not use the 8.3 filename. This will of course fail on DOS systems.
It seems they even managed to choose such bogus data that will not trigger a chkdsk error, though I am sure MS will patch this.
Edited 2009-07-02 16:57 UTC