Computer File Systems ©Richard Goldman November 26, 2001
FAT12 FAT16 FAT32 NTFS WinFS HPFS
FAT12 Used on small disks Supported by: –DOS –Win 3X –Win 95 –Win 98 –Win Me –Win NT –Win 2000 –Win XP
FAT16 Max partition size 4GB (64KB cluster) Max recommended partition size 2GB – some utilities will have problems with partitions over 2GB. (32K cluster) Max of 512 entries in root directory Max 2GB file size Supported by: –DOS –Win 3X –Win 95 –Win 98 –Win Me –Win NT –Win 2000 –Win XP –OS/2 –UNIX
FAT32 Max partition size – 2TB Min partition size – 512MB Win 2000 can support and access partitions up to 2TB but will only create partitions up to 32GB. Supported By: –Win 95 OSR2 (B) –Win Me –Win 2000 –Win XP
NTFS Windows NT 4.0 uses Ver 1.1 –(also called Ver 4.0) –Service Pack 4.0 add ability to access Ver 5.0 Windows 2000 uses NTFS Ver 5.0 Max partition size – 16EB
NTFS 5.0 Features Reparse Points: Files and directories can have actions associatedReparse Points Improved Security and Permissions:Security and Permissions Change Journals: Disk volumes can be set to keep track of all operations performed on the files and directories they contain.Change Journals Encryption: NTFS 5.0 allows you to encrypt files and automatically decrypt them as they are read.Encryption Disk Quotas: Administrators can track how much disk space is being used by users or groups of users, and even limit disk space use if necessary.Disk Quotas Sparse File Support: To save space on the disk, support was added for the more efficient storage of sparse files, which are large files that are mostly empty.Sparse File Support Disk Defragmenter:Disk Defragmenter
WinFS Features WinFS (Windows Future Storage ) Will be introduced with: –file management and searching features in Longhorn (code-named for next version of Microsoft Windows) –“…new file system with enhanced storage capabilities” –“radically improves file management and searching features in Windows ” Will be an add on to: – Windows 2003 Server Windows Future Storage Services Windows Storage Full-Text Index