From: alexfrunews@gmail.com   
      
   On Saturday, October 15, 2022 at 9:46:16 PM UTC-7, muta...@gmail.com wrote:   
   > I don't suppose there is already a bit, or a bit could   
   > be used, in the FAT directory to say that a file is   
   > contiguous such that you don't need to go through   
   > the cluster chains to seek, you can instead go   
   > directly to the required sector, given the start   
   > cluster?   
      
   There's unused space, which you could use for it, but doing so   
   may introduce incompatibility with other software.   
      
   Using magic timestamps or making them more coarse   
   (to encode the bit in there) is similarly problematic.   
      
   OTOH, you could cache portions of the FAT or even cluster chains.   
      
   Also, if you cache just the middle cluster number for a file,   
   you can speed the chain traversal by a factor of two (you effectively   
   halve the file for the purpose of seeking).   
      
   Additional on-disk metadata is OK, but you need to keep it in sync   
   with the rest of the FS and at this point it's probably better to   
   switch to a journaled FS and abandon FAT altogether.   
      
   Alex   
      
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