File Allocation Table (FAT)

File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system with the table of contents that an operating system maintains on a hard drive. The hard drive provides a map of clusters, which are basic units of storage on which the file is placed.

When users store a new file on the hard drive, these files are saved in a number of clusters. A single file may not be stored in clusters which are next to each other; they can be scattered over hard disk on different clusters. Clusters can be different size like 2,048 bytes, 4,096 bytes, or 8,192 bytes.

When a new file is stored on the hard drive, Operating system creates a new entry in the FAT where the cluster is located with their sequential order. For example, if a web page is too long then that file is stored in more than one cluster on the hard disk. Therefore, when we read a particular file, the Operating System scans the files and checks whether it resembles any file in cluster and store it as an entire file where you want to read it.

Today, FAT file system is most commonly used for solid-state memory cards, flash memory cards, embedded devices and floppy disks.

When a File is Deleted

During system crash, the data stored on the hard disk is not lost forever. But, the allocated space for the lost data is marked as “available” for the storage of new data. Until and unless the new files are stored on the free space the lost data can still be retrieved. The CHKDSK or SCANDISK utility helps in examining the status of each and every record stored in FAT. If the records are not part of any data set available then it is marked as “free” to store new data.

Therefore, we can solve the above scenario to recover the lost files from FAT by using the best hard drive recovery tool known as “Remo Recover (Windows) – Pro Edition”. The software has an advanced in-built scan algorithm to retrieve the lost files which are not overwritten by new data.

Related Information

Recover Files from a FAT32 Hard Drive
FAT32 file system is used in all external devices like USB drives, SD cards, memory cards, XD cards etc. If you have deleted or lost data from these external devices you can recover them using Remo Recover. USB drives consist of flash memory and deleted files can be recovered from Recycle Bin until USB drive is connected to system. The software helps in recovering deleted / lost files from formatted / re-formatted FAT32 partitioned hard drives. It supports recovery on popular versions of Windows like Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

Reformatted Hard Drive Data Recovery
Formatting a hard drive leads to loss of entire data stored on that particular drive or partition. Hard drive can be partitioned on the file system like FAT and NTFS. When the hard drive is formatted and the file system is changed from FAT to NTFS, the process is known as reformatting. In such scenarios, .data might be lost if you don't have a backup file. To restore data back from reformatted hard drive, make use of Remo Recover.

Recover FAT32 Partition
FAT32 partition is commonly used on external storage devices for transferring data from one device to another. There are chances of data getting corrupted, lost, deleted, formatted etc from external devices. To overcome such data loss scenarios, try Remo Recover to restore back lost data. Recovery tool supports recovery of files stored on FAT16, FAT32 partitions created on SATA / SCSI/ IDE hard drives or any external USB drives.