How to Configure a FAT File System (Windows CE 5.0)

Send Feedback

In the process of developing an OS design, you must provide file access and memory management for your OS design by configuring FAT file system support. You can configure the FAT file system either alone or as a TFAT file system. If you choose to configure the FAT file system alone, it does not impact run-time image performance, but it is not a transaction-safe file system and can be corrupted if a write operation is interrupted. To remedy this, you can configure a FAT file system to support the optional TFAT file system, which provides transaction safety for data stored on a hard disk. A TFAT file system ensures that the FAT remains intact if a write operation is not completed, but, as a side effect, it reduces run-time image performance. You can further customize your FAT or TFAT file system by editing the file system settings in the Common.reg file for your OS design.

To track your progress in the following table, select the check box next to each step.

  Step Topic
1. Create an OS design. Creating an OS Design
2. Familiarize yourself with the benefits of FAT and TFAT file systems, and choose either FAT or TFAT as your file system. FAT File System

Transaction-Safe FAT File System

3. If you want to force FAT to always perform a write-through operation, regardless of the parameters sent to CreateFile, enable the FATFS_FORCE_WRITETHROUGH flag in the Common.reg file for your OS design. FAT File System Registry Settings
4. If you want to enable disk caching, set the EnableFatCache and EnableDataCache values in the Common.reg file for your OS design to 1. FAT File System Registry Settings
5. If you have chosen to use TFAT as your file system, enable the FATFS_TRANS_DATA flag in the Common.reg file for your OS design. Not applicable
6. If you have chosen to use TFAT and are using a file system block driver that does not perform atomic write operations, enable the FATFS_TFAT_NONATOMIC_SECTOR registry flag in the Common.reg file for your OS design. Not applicable
7. Build your run-time image

If your run-time image builds with no errors, then you have successfully configured your FAT file system and built your run-time image.

Building a Run-Time Image

See Also

FAT File System | Transaction-Safe FAT File System | FAT File System Registry Settings | TFAT Registry Settings

Send Feedback on this topic to the authors

Feedback FAQs

© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.