Create FAT Filesystems

After creating a blank disk, we have to initalize it with a file system before we can use it.

In Linux, we have a command mkfs.vfat to format the disk to FAT.

Usage

mkfs.vfat -F FAT-size -f NUMFAT -S logical-sector-size -s sectors-per-cluster -R number-of-reserved-sectors DEVICE

You can control various parameters of the FAT filesystem.

Example

Suppose we would like to create a FAT32 file systems,with

• 2 FATs

• 512 bytes per sector

• 1 sector per cluster

• 32 Reserved sectors

mkfs.vfat -F 32 -f 2 -S 512 -s 1 -R 32 test.disk

Then the virtual disk we created earlier is now initialized.