Filesystems Flashcards
NTFS
New Technology File System
The New Technology File System (NTFS) is a proprietary file system developed by Microsoft for use with Windows. It provides a 64-bit addressing scheme, allowing for very large volumes and file sizes. In theory, the maximum volume size is 16 Exabytes, but actual implementations of NTFS are limited to between 137 GB and 256 Terabytes, depending on the version of Windows and the allocation unit size. The key NTFS features are:
Journaling—When data is written to an NTFS volume, it is re-read, verified, and logged. In the 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. This file version history allows users to revert changes more easily and also supports backup operations.
Security—Features such as file permissions and ownership, file access audit trails, quota management, and encrypting file system (EFS) allow administrators to ensure only authorized users can read/modify file data.
POSIX Compliance—To support UNIX/Linux compatibility, Microsoft engineered NTFS to support case-sensitive naming, hard links, and other key features required by UNIX/Linux applications. Although the file system is case-sensitive capable and preserves case, Windows does not insist upon case-sensitive naming.
Indexing—The Indexing Service creates a catalog of file and folder locations and properties, speeding up searches.
Dynamic Disks—This disk management feature allows space on multiple physical disks to be combined into volumes.
Windows Home editions do not support dynamic disks or encryption. The latest Windows feature updates have increased the maximum possible `NTFS` volume size to 8 Petabytes (PB), or 8,000 TB.
Windows can only be installed to an NTFS-formatted partition. NTFS is also usually the best choice for additional partitions and removable drives that will be used with Windows. The only significant drawback of NTFS is that it is not fully supported by operating systems other than Windows. macOS can read NTFS drives but cannot write to them. Linux distributions and utilities may be able to support NTFS to some degree.
FAT32
The FAT file system is a very early type named for its method of organization—the file allocation table. The FAT provides links from one allocation unit to another. FAT32 is a variant of FAT that uses a 32-bit allocation table, nominally supporting volumes up to 2 TB. The maximum file size is 4 GB minus 1 byte.
FAT32 does not support any of the reliability or security features of NTFS. It is typically used to format the system partition (the one that holds the boot loader). It is also useful when formatting removable drives and memory cards intended for multiple operating systems and devices.
exFAT
exFAT is a 64-bit version of FAT designed for use with removable hard drives and flash media. Like NTFS, exFAT supports large volumes , up to a recommended maximum size of 512 Terabytes (TB). There is also support for access permissions but not encryption.
ext3
Most Linux distributions use some version of the extended (ext) file system to format partitions on mass storage devices. ext3 is the standard Linux file system that includes journaling and has since been replaced with ext4.
ext4
Most Linux distributions use some version of the extended (ext) file system to format partitions on mass storage devices. ext4 delivers better performance than ext3 and is usually the best choice for new systems.
APFS
Apple Mac workstations and laptops use the proprietary Apple File System (APFS), which supports journaling, snapshots, permissions/ownership, and encryption.
