This is why we get paid the big bucks, to keep this terminology as confusing as possible for the general populace. In a typical installation, the boot and system partitions are the same. In that instance, a FAT system AND boot partion could prove useful if you are debugging boot.ini problems, flaky harddrives, broken mirror sets, or the like. A quick boot from a DOS diskette can have you up and running quickly in some situations where you have messed up the system partition or overlaid directories in your boot partition. However, I would never use FAT on a production server, and disagree with those who say you should.
Security is just too important.
Any administrator who sacrifices good security practices for convenience has no business maintaining Windows servers for an enterprise, in my humble opinion. I know this is less of a tip and more of a clarification, but I hope you will find it useful. However, we can't guarantee the accuracy and validity of the material submitted. You agree that your use of the ask the expert services and your reliance on any questions, answers, information or other materials received through the web site will be at your own risk. A complete explanation of giveaway rules is available.