My explanation of yo questions:
1. FAT
Yes, it's true that
FAT32 (FAT is the FileAllocationTable, something like pointers, showing
to the real physical location 'files' are located (as you know, there
are just 0s and 1s - binary data) was originally limited to 32GB (FAT16
to 16GB), and it has got something to do with the physical design of
elder HDDs and the ability to handle the adresses, sectors, clusters
etc.). Later there were 'tricks' used to ship around those limitations
(as everybody knows, FAT was developed by MicroShit (also NTFS) and as
everybody knows, they don't know much about their own techniques (and
therefore don't give rich infos about their products ;-).
2. DOS
Bill once said (in DOS days), that noone will ever need a bigger RAM
than a few kBytes, which has been the reason for some smart programmers
to 'imitate' a bigger one (EMM386) for DOS, to have the possibilitiy
using larger Programs under DOS.
3. NTFS
And the same for NTFS:
invented by M$, designed for NT (counter player to UNIX), not readable
(except with tricky little programs) by FAT OSes like Win98, Win95, Win
1 to 3...... Because of the new technique of hiding files, crypting
files, setting access permissions of files, HDDs etc. Integrated in NTFS
there is the ACL (Access Control List), where all the permissions etc.
are written down (something like a map for your NTFS formatted HD).
File-/HD-size limits are given by the (imperfect) design and only
thinking as far as they can see (even if there's misty weather ;-)) or
simply not beeing able to create a bigger one (because of development of
technology).
So if you can read a NTFS partition on a non-NTFS OS, you need to
install (perhaps by M$-update) a program, that can decrypt the
file-system on a local computer.
And when you download a file from a NTFS server to a FAT partition?
Well, quite easy to explain: In the Network you don't have direct access
to the partition, only to the File list of the server (as I said, all
data is binary), and the server decrypts the file on his side, then
sends it to your Network Card (by IP and MAC) and your PC stores it in
the right format (because the File-System has got nothing to do with the
file itself, it only says, how and where the data is saved on disk)
As you can see, you need a bit of techniqual knowledge and 'history' of
Computers, to understand, what noone can understand at first sight. As
you can see: The one and only reason is a mix of development in key
technologies (e.g. older parts for older HDs would have been too big, to
integrate them in a 5,25" shelter).
Hope, this helped you a little, to understand, why silly things happen
in Computer industry (but also in other industries, like car. Why don't
they build economical cars? Answer:
1.They first have to sell the bad versions, to manipulate the customers
for wanting a better product, and therefore buy something new.
2. The Oil-industry wants to sell more, not less oil in a year
But don't think about that, consume!
4. Partition Magic: As you can read above, there are software tricks
used, if the hardware is limitted.
Why do you think M$ bought SysInternals???? Because they knew more
about Windows than M$ itself, and
therefore wrote better programs than M$ would ever release......
Sorry, if you can't cope with my english, but I'm german - and no, I
don't have problems to understand, what you are talking about
;-))))))))
But that's really enough for now, cheers
(e-mail address removed):
