FAT32 = smaller cluster size, maybe better LFN handling.

Also larger partition sizes.

DOS/9x FAT16=2gb partitions sizes.
NT4/2000 can use 4gb FAT16 partitions size.

I don't think it makes a big difference which way you go. If you desperately want to keep your DOS 6.22/Win3.1 install, put Win95 on separate FAT32 partition. But if Win3.1 is not important to you, and since Win95 comes with real DOS anyway, you might want to scratch your current installs, and use DOS/Win95 on FAT32 everywhere.

When FAT32 first came out there were unconfirmed reports that it was slower. I doubt you would notice it much though.

MiniMax wrote:

you might want to scratch your current installs, and use DOS/Win95 on FAT32 everywhere.

But beware that you need to boot with DOS 7 to access FAT32 partitions --you should prepare your DOS 7's CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT accordingly to play DOS games.

Dos 7.0 does not have 100% backwards dos comapitability
6.22 has better backwards compatiability and it won't make much of a difference switching the fat's. Windows 95b is just as good. Never seen 95b crash. Just stick to 95b. 95b is just as good.

Never seen 95b crash.

Never used it?

Use windows 95b a lot. It does not crash which it is awesome. You can't crash windows 95b. If you see a crash make a youtube video for proof because i have not seen it crash. Windows 95b cannot crash.

Windows 9.x would crash even without doing nothing.

DOS/9x FAT16=2gb partitions sizes.
NT4/2000 can use 4gb FAT16 partitions size.

Doesn't really matter to me... my drives are only 1.6gb a piece, so FAT16 is fine. I was just wondering if FAT32 was significantly faster (which according to most responses here it is not) and if there would be some problem or instability if I ran Win95 "C" (or "B" for that matter -- I read that "B" supports FAT32 as well).

But beware that you need to boot with DOS 7 to access FAT32 partitions --you should prepare your DOS 7's CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT accordingly to play DOS games.

I don't want to be bothered, and like abyss said, DOS 6.22 has better backwards-compatibility for the old DOS games. I really only want two boot options: DOS 6.22 for the DOS games and some version of Win95 for the 95 games. I'm just into the nostalgia of playing the old games... I don't have nostalgia for creating endless boot files so there's an option for every game I play... those days are long gone...

kneedragger37 wrote:

and like abyss said, DOS 6.22 has better backwards-compatibility for the old DOS games.

Several months ago I was asking the same question.

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

Windows 9.x would crash even without doing nothing.

🤣 touche.

abyss wrote:

Never seen 95b crash.

LOL, What fantasy world do you live in?

There are DOS drivers that allow FAT32 access. I seem to recall that the DRFAT32 driver from DR-DOS works well enough with MS-DOS 6.22.

And I for one am still not convinced that there's much of a reason to chose Win95b over Win98 (or at least Win98 with 98lite installed).

I dunno. I've played an awful lot of DOS games in DOS 7. Maybe there are some that don't work, but I'm not sure I've ever run into one myself. It's more likely that the new hardware you are undoubtedly running with Win9x and DOS7 (vs. DOS 6.x era stuff) is the culprit of instability.

And yeah, saying Win9x is some sort of paragon of OS stability is not exactly very realistic. 🤣. 98SE is the best of that bunch, but still, heh.

I keep a Fat16 partition on my Win98se machine just for absolute compatibilty but I don't remember finding and games that don't work with Fat32 but work with Fat16, of course with disk utilities the story is different. The biggest issue I've seen with games on Fat32 is that a lot of them don't like to have space or free space greater than 2GB which Fat32 enables. But seeing as you already have Fat16 and don't need the large drive support I don't see any compelling reason for you to covert to Fat32. If you keep them Fat16 you will be able to see all files on both drives in either Dos 6 or Win95.

Also you may want to consider going to Win98SE instead of 95 as it is even more stable in my opinion. And aside from maybe a slightly smaller memory footprint I don't know of any advantages Win95 would have over Win98.