# FAT32 v. FAT32 (LBA)

## Technetium

Hi,

I'm partitioning a disk and I'm wondering what the difference is between FAT32 and FAT32 (LBA) in fdisk.

I used both the last time I partitioned a disk, and I'm wondering, "Why?"

This is my old disk's partition table:

```

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/hdb1   *           1         426     3417969+   7  HPFS/NTFS

Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.

/dev/hdb2             426         821     3173828+   b  W95 FAT32

Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.

/dev/hdb3             821        1216     3173828+   c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

/dev/hdb4            1216        1583     2949254    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

```

Any hints?

Thanks,

Tc

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## wmgoree

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_block_addressing

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/modesLBA-c.html

Enjoy

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## Technetium

Gracias.

 :Shocked: 

All Google searches turn up similar information ... roughly from 3-4 years ago.

I thought, after I had posted this, that this was a bad post to a Gentoo forum.  The only saving grace being that I do all my partitioning from Gentoo, because I can trust it.

 :Idea: 

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## moocha

As far as I can remember, code 0x0b (FAT32) was the default code for partitions containing a file system for pre-OSR2 Windows 95 installation. Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows 98 / 98SE / ME default to code 0x0c (FAT32 LBA) when they detect a LBA-capable BIOS on a hard drive bigger than 4 gigabytes (and if LBA is turned on in the BIOS too, of course), otherwise they use 0x0b (funnily enough even on LBA-capable BIOSes with LBA turned on if the drive is less than 4 gigabytes or the partition is less than 2 gigabytes; this is incorrect behavior but things still work).

Since you're probably not using the 9x series of Windows operating systems, FAT32 LBA should be the code of choice.

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