George White wrote in a message to Rob Hamerling:

 GW> OK. Understood. I _did_ say it was another Microsoft oddity.
 GW> I wonder why they chose the limits they use in the format
 GW> program? 

It was done originally because DOS 1.x kept a copy of the whole FAT in
memory, so the size of the FAT had to be limited, and 1 cluster = 2 sectors
mapping was used on the larger (320 KB) floppy sizes.  While reasonable
with floppies, the practice had to be dropped when hard drives became
popular.  By the time 1.2 and 1.44 MB disks were introduced, the concern
about FAT size had ceased to be an issue, so the more natural 1 cluster = 1
sector mapping was used.
 
-- Mike


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