English

Noun

file allocation table ‎(plural file allocation tables)

1. (computing) A table used internally by the operating system to keep track of the structure of a disk and where files are stored on it.
   • 2006, D. M. Dhamdhere, Operating Systems: A Concept-based Approach, 2^nd edition, Tata McGraw-Hill, page 346:

     […] , although their access involves traversing the indirection in the file allocation table.

   • 2008, A. A. Puntambekar, I. A. Dhotre, Systems Programming, 3^rd revised edition, Technical Publications Pune, page 13:20:

     The file allocation table needs just a single entry for each file, […]

   • 2008, Bruce Jacob, Spencer W. Ng, David T. Wang, Memory Systems: Cache, DRAM, Disk, Morgan Kaufmann, page 691:

     For the file allocation table type of file systems, an entire file system allocation table is large and requires many disk sectors to store, […]

Translations

Synonyms

• (computing): FAT (abbreviation)

See also

• allocation table
• file table