File System Types

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• Each OS is associated with types of file system

NTFS

The New Technology File System (NTFS) is a proprietary file system developed by Microsoft for use with Windows.

• 64-bit addressing scheme
• 137 GB – 256 Terabytes in size
• Windows can only be installed on NTFS
• not fully supported by OS other than Windows
  • macOS can read, not write to it
  • Linux partially supports

Key NTFS features:

• Journaling—When data is written to an NTFS volume, it is re-read, verified, and logged
  • in event of a problem, the sector concerned is marked as bad and the data relocated
  •  Journaling makes recovery after power outages and crashes faster and more reliable
• Snapshots—This allows the Volume Shadow Copy Service to make read-only copies of files at given points in time even if the file is locked by another process
• Security—Features such as file permissions and ownership, file access audit trails, quota management, and encrypting file system (EFS)
• POSIX Compliance—UNIX/Linux compatibility
  • support case-sensitive naming, hard links, and other key features required by UNIX/Linux applications
• Indexing—The Indexing Service creates a catalog of file and folder locations and properties
  • speeds up caches
• Dynamic Disks—This disk management feature allows space on multiple physical disks to be combined into volumes

FAT32

• named for its method of organization—the file allocation table
• provides links from one allocation unit to another
• FAT32 is a variant of FAT that uses a 32-bit allocation table
• maximum volume size: 2 TB
• maximum file size: 4 GB minus 1 byte
• does not support any of the reliability or security features of NTFS
• typically used to format the system partition (holds boot loader)
• useful when formatting removable drives and memory cards intended for multiple operating systems and devices

exFAT

• 64-bit version of FAT designed for use with removable hard drives and flash media
• maximum volume size: 12 TB
  • supports large volumes
• support for access permissions but not encryption

EXT

• Used by most Linux distros
• ext3 is a standard Linux file system
  • supports journaling
• ext4 delivers better performance than ext3
  • best choice for new systems

APFS

• Apple Mac workstations and laptops use the proprietary Apple File System (APFS)
• supports journaling, snapshots, permissions/ownership, and encryption