FAT32 has the following enhancements:

The root folder on a FAT32 drive is an ordinary cluster chain and can be located anywhere on the volume. For this reason, FAT32 does not restrict the number of entries in the root folder.

FAT32 uses smaller clusters (4 KB for volumes up to 8 GB), so it allocates disk space more efficiently than FAT16. Depending on the size of your files, FAT32 creates the potential for tens and even hundreds of megabytes of additional free disk space on larger volumes compared to FAT16.

FAT32 can automatically use the backup copy of the file allocation table instead of the default copy (with FAT16, only a disk repair tool such as Chkdsk can implement the backup).

The boot sector is automatically backed up at a specified location on the volume, so FAT32 volumes are less susceptible to single points of failure than FAT16 volumes.


Disadvantages of FAT32 include:

The largest FAT32 volume that Windows 2000 can format is 32 GB.
FAT32 volumes are not directly accessible from operating systems other than Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows 98.

If you have a startup failure, you cannot start the computer by using an MS-DOS or Windows 95 (excluding version OSR2 and later) bootable floppy disk.

There is no built-in file system security or compression scheme with FAT32.