About Windows 2000 File Systems

An operating system's ability to access files on a volume depends on the file system with which the volume was formatted. Table 3.1 shows the file system format used by various operating systems.

Table 3.1 Operating System and File System Compatibility

Operating system	File System Format of Volume
Windows 2000	NTFS FAT16 FAT32
Microsoft® Windows NT®	NTFS FAT16
Microsoft® Windows® 95 OEM Service Release 2 (OSR2) and Microsoft® Windows® 98	FAT16 FAT32
Windows 95 prior to version OSR2	FAT16
Microsoft® MS-DOS®	FAT16

Note

FAT16 and FAT32 are referred to synonymously as FAT unless the differences between them must be noted.

You can use long and short file names in both NTFS and FAT volumes. A long file name can be up to 256 characters long. Short file names contain an eight-letter file name and a three-letter file name extenstion and use the format xxxxxxxx.yyy. Short file names are compatible with MS-DOS.

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