The Alesis ADAT File Streaming Technology, or ADAT/FST, records onto hard drives in a unique
way designed from the ground up for multitrack audio. Many other hard disk recorders use the
Microsoft-designed FAT32 or Apple's HFS+ file format. Since these were originally designed for
the relatively small data files used in personal computers, not for real-time multitrack recording
and playback, they break up audio into many small files scattered across the disk. Alesis
ADAT/FST keeps all the tracks of a song in large associated clusters on the hard disk, so the disk
doesn't have to "hunt" all over during recording and playback.