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Following are Microsoft's Windows Glossary definitions for each of the 3 file systems:
File Allocation Table (FAT): A file system used by MS-DOS and other Windows-based operating systems to organize and manage files. The file allocation table (FAT) is a data structure that Windows creates when you format a volume by using the FAT or FAT32 file systems. Windows stores information about each file in the FAT so that it can retrieve the file later.
FAT32: A derivative of the File Allocation Table (FAT) file system. FAT32 supports smaller cluster sizes and larger volumes than FAT, which results in more efficient space allocation on FAT32 volumes.
NTFS: An advanced file system that provides performance, security, reliability, and advanced features that are not found in any version of FAT. For example, NTFS guarantees volume consistency by using standard transaction logging and recovery techniques. If a system fails, NTFS uses its log file and checkpoint information to restore the consistency of the file system. In Windows 2000 and Windows XP, NTFS also provides advanced features such as file and folder permissions, encryption, disk quotas, and compression.

thanks LORD..EC...

yeah...lord_ec is correct...as far as my knowledge goes the fat and fat32 differ with the size of the hard disk it can address i.e with fat16 u will have 16 bits 4 the block address i.e. u can address max of 2^16*block size(usually 512bytes) which comes out pretty less...thus we started using fat32 where this field became 32 bits in size