File system - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/File_system

File system
In computing, a file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to FS or fs) governs file
organization and access. A local file system is a capability of an operating system that services the
applications running on the same computer.[1][2] A distributed file system is a protocol that
provides file access between networked computers.

A file system provides a data storage service that allows applications to share mass storage.
Without a file system, applications could access the storage in incompatible ways that lead to
resource contention, data corruption and data loss.

There are many file system designs and implementations – with various structure and features and
various resulting characteristics such as speed, flexibility, security, size and more.

Files systems have been developed for many types of storage devices, including hard disk drives
(HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), magnetic tapes and optical discs.[3]

A portion of the computer main memory can be set up as a RAM disk that serves as a storage
device for a file system. File systems such as tmpfs can store files in virtual memory.

A virtual file system provides access to files that are either computed on request, called virtual files
(see procfs and sysfs), or are mapping into another, backing storage.

Etymology
From c. 1900 and before the advent of computers the terms file system, filing system and system
for filing were used to describe methods of organizing, storing and retrieving paper documents.[4]
By 1961, the term file system was being applied to computerized filing alongside the original
meaning.[5] By 1964, it was in general use.[6]

Architecture
A local file system's architecture can be described as layers of abstraction even though a particular
file system design may not actually separate the concepts.[7]

The logical file system layer provides relatively high-level access via an application programming
interface (API) for file operations including open, close, read and write – delegating operations to
lower layers. This layer manages open file table entries and per-process file descriptors.[8] It
provides file access, directory operations, security and protection.[7]

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The virtual file system, an optional layer, supports multiple concurrent instances of physical file
systems, each of which called a file system implementation.[8]

The physical file system layer provides relatively low-level access to a storage device (e.g. disk). It
reads and writes data blocks, provides buffering and other memory management and controls
placement of blocks in specific locations on the storage medium. This layer uses device drivers or
channel I/O to drive the storage device.[7]

Attributes

File names
A file name, or filename, identifies a file to consuming applications and in some cases users.

A file name is unique so that an application can refer to exactly one file for a particular name. If the
file system supports directories, then generally file name uniqueness is enforced within the context
of each directory. In other words, a storage can contain multiple files with the same name, but not
in the same directory.

Most file systems restrict the length of a file name.

Some file systems match file names as case sensitive and others as case insensitive. For example,
the names MYFILE and myfile match the same file for case insensitive, but different files for case
sensitive.

Most modern file systems allow a file name to contain a wide range of characters from the Unicode
character set. Some restrict characters such as those used to indicate special attributes such as a
device, device type, directory prefix, file path separator, or file type.

Directories
File systems typically support organizing files into directories, also called folders, which
segregate files into groups.

This may be implemented by associating the file name with an index in a table of contents or an
inode in a Unix-like file system.

Directory structures may be flat (i.e. linear), or allow hierarchies by allowing a directory to contain
directories, called subdirectories.

The first file system to support arbitrary hierarchies of directories was used in the Multics
operating system.[9] The native file systems of Unix-like systems also support arbitrary directory
hierarchies, as do, Apple's Hierarchical File System and its successor HFS+ in classic Mac OS, the
FAT file system in MS-DOS 2.0 and later versions of MS-DOS and in Microsoft Windows, the
NTFS file system in the Windows NT family of operating systems, and the ODS-2 (On-Disk

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Structure-2) and higher levels of the Files-11 file system in OpenVMS.

Metadata
In addition to data, the file content, a file system also manages associated metadata which may
include but is not limited to:

name
size which may be stored as the number of blocks allocated or as a byte count
when created, last accessed, last backed-up
owner user and group
access permissions
file attributes such as whether the file is read-only, executable, etc.
device type (e.g. block, character, socket, subdirectory, etc.)
A file system stores associated metadata separate from the content of the file.

Most file systems store the names of all the files in one directory in one place—the directory table
for that directory—which is often stored like any other file. Many file systems put only some of the
metadata for a file in the directory table, and the rest of the metadata for that file in a completely
separate structure, such as the inode.

Most file systems also store metadata not associated with any one particular file. Such metadata
includes information about unused regions—free space bitmap, block availability map—and
information about bad sectors. Often such information about an allocation group is stored inside
the allocation group itself.

Additional attributes can be associated on file systems, such as NTFS, XFS, ext2, ext3, some
versions of UFS, and HFS+, using extended file attributes. Some file systems provide for user
defined attributes such as the author of the document, the character encoding of a document or the
size of an image.

Some file systems allow for different data collections to be associated with one file name. These
separate collections may be referred to as streams or forks. Apple has long used a forked file
system on the Macintosh, and Microsoft supports streams in NTFS. Some file systems maintain
multiple past revisions of a file under a single file name; the file name by itself retrieves the most
recent version, while prior saved version can be accessed using a special naming convention such
as "filename;4" or "filename(-4)" to access the version four saves ago.

See comparison of file systems#Metadata for details on which file systems support which kinds of
metadata.

Storage space organization

A local file system tracks which areas of storage belong to which file and which are not being used.

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When a file system creates a file, it allocates space for data. Some file systems permit or require
specifying an initial space allocation and subsequent incremental allocations as the file grows.

To delete a file, the file system records that the file's space is free; available to use for another file.

A local file system manages storage space

to provide a level of reliability and
efficiency. Generally, it allocates storage
device space in a granular manner,
usually multiple physical units (i.e.
bytes). For example, in Apple DOS of the
early 1980s, 256-byte sectors on 140
kilobyte floppy disk used a track/sector An example of slack space, demonstrated with 4,096-byte
map. NTFS clusters: 100,000 files, each five bytes per file, which
equal to 500,000 bytes of actual data but require 409,600,000
The granular nature results in unused bytes of disk space to store
space, sometimes called slack space, for
each file except for those that have the
rare size that is a multiple of the granular allocation.[10] For a 512-byte allocation, the average
unused space is 256 bytes. For 64 KB clusters, the average unused space is 32 KB.

Generally, the allocation unit size is set when the storage is configured. Choosing a relatively small
size compared to the files stored, results in excessive access overhead. Choosing a relatively large
size results in excessive unused space. Choosing an allocation size based on the average size of files
expected to be in the storage tends to minimize unusable space.

Fragmentation
As a file system creates, modifies and deletes files, the
underlying storage representation may become fragmented.
Files and the unused space between files will occupy allocation
blocks that are not contiguous.

A file becomes fragmented if space needed to store its content File systems may become
cannot be allocated in contiguous blocks. Free space becomes fragmented
fragmented when files are deleted.[11]

This is invisible to the end user and the system still works correctly. However this can degrade
performance on some storage hardware that work better with contiguous blocks such as hard disk
drives. Other hardware such as solid-state drives are not affected by fragmentation.

Access control
A file system often supports access control of data that it manages.

The intent of access control is often to prevent certain users from reading or modifying certain

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files.

Access control can also restrict access by program in order to ensure that data is modified in a
controlled way. Examples include passwords stored in the metadata of the file or elsewhere and file
permissions in the form of permission bits, access control lists, or capabilities. The need for file
system utilities to be able to access the data at the media level to reorganize the structures and
provide efficient backup usually means that these are only effective for polite users but are not
effective against intruders.

Methods for encrypting file data are sometimes included in the file system. This is very effective
since there is no need for file system utilities to know the encryption seed to effectively manage the
data. The risks of relying on encryption include the fact that an attacker can copy the data and use
brute force to decrypt the data. Additionally, losing the seed means losing the data.

Storage quota
Some operating systems allow a system administrator to enable disk quotas to limit a user's use of
storage space.

Data integrity
A file system typically ensures that stored data remains consistent in both normal operations as
well as exceptional situations like:

accessing program neglects to inform the file system that it has completed file access (to close
a file)
accessing program terminates abnormally (crashes)
media failure
loss of connection to remote systems
operating system failure
system reset (soft reboot)
power failure (hard reboot)
Recovery from exceptional situations may include updating metadata, directory entries and
handling data that was buffered but not written to storage media.

Recording
A file system might record events to allow analysis of issues such as:

file or systemic problems and performance

nefarious access

Data access

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Byte stream access

Many file systems access data as a stream of bytes. Typically, to read file data, a program provides a
memory buffer and the file system retrieves data from the medium and then writes the data to the
buffer. A write involves the program providing a buffer of bytes that the file system reads and then
stores to the medium.

Record access
Some file systems, or layers on top of a file system, allow a program to define a record so that a
program can read and write data as a structure; not an unorganized sequence of bytes.

If a fixed length record definition is used, then locating the nth record can be calculated
mathematically, which is relatively fast compared to parsing the data for record separators.

An identification for each record, also known as a key, allows a program to read, write and update
records without regard to their location in storage. Such storage requires managing blocks of
media, usually separating key blocks and data blocks. Efficient algorithms can be developed with
pyramid structures for locating records.[12]

Utilities
Typically, a file system can be managed by the user via various utility programs.

Some utilities allow the user to create, configure and remove an instance of a file system. It may
allow extending or truncating the space allocated to the file system.

Directory utilities may be used to create, rename and delete directory entries, which are also
known as dentries (singular: dentry),[13] and to alter metadata associated with a directory.
Directory utilities may also include capabilities to create additional links to a directory (hard links
in Unix), to rename parent links (".." in Unix-like operating systems), and to create bidirectional
links to files.

File utilities create, list, copy, move and delete files, and alter metadata. They may be able to
truncate data, truncate or extend space allocation, append to, move, and modify files in-place.
Depending on the underlying structure of the file system, they may provide a mechanism to
prepend to or truncate from the beginning of a file, insert entries into the middle of a file, or delete
entries from a file. Utilities to free space for deleted files, if the file system provides an undelete
function, also belong to this category.

Some file systems defer operations such as reorganization of free space, secure erasing of free
space, and rebuilding of hierarchical structures by providing utilities to perform these functions at
times of minimal activity. An example is the file system defragmentation utilities.

Some of the most important features of file system utilities are supervisory activities which may
involve bypassing ownership or direct access to the underlying device. These include high-
performance backup and recovery, data replication, and reorganization of various data structures

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and allocation tables within the file system.

File system API

Utilities, libraries and programs use file system APIs to make requests of the file system. These
include data transfer, positioning, updating metadata, managing directories, managing access
specifications, and removal.

Multiple file systems within a single system

Frequently, retail systems are configured with a single file system occupying the entire storage
device.

Another approach is to partition the disk so that several file systems with different attributes can
be used. One file system, for use as browser cache or email storage, might be configured with a
small allocation size. This keeps the activity of creating and deleting files typical of browser activity
in a narrow area of the disk where it will not interfere with other file allocations. Another partition
might be created for the storage of audio or video files with a relatively large block size. Yet another
may normally be set read-only and only periodically be set writable. Some file systems, such as
ZFS and APFS, support multiple file systems sharing a common pool of free blocks, supporting
several file systems with different attributes without having to reserved a fixed amount of space for
each file system.[14][15]

A third approach, which is mostly used in cloud systems, is to use "disk images" to house additional
file systems, with the same attributes or not, within another (host) file system as a file. A common
example is virtualization: one user can run an experimental Linux distribution (using the ext4 file
system) in a virtual machine under his/her production Windows environment (using NTFS). The
ext4 file system resides in a disk image, which is treated as a file (or multiple files, depending on
the hypervisor and settings) in the NTFS host file system.

Having multiple file systems on a single system has the additional benefit that in the event of a
corruption of a single file system, the remaining file systems will frequently still be intact. This
includes virus destruction of the system file system or even a system that will not boot. File system
utilities which require dedicated access can be effectively completed piecemeal. In addition,
defragmentation may be more effective. Several system maintenance utilities, such as virus scans
and backups, can also be processed in segments. For example, it is not necessary to backup the file
system containing videos along with all the other files if none have been added since the last
backup. As for the image files, one can easily "spin off" differential images which contain only
"new" data written to the master (original) image. Differential images can be used for both safety
concerns (as a "disposable" system - can be quickly restored if destroyed or contaminated by a
virus, as the old image can be removed and a new image can be created in matter of seconds, even
without automated procedures) and quick virtual machine deployment (since the differential
images can be quickly spawned using a script in batches).

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Types

Disk file systems

A disk file system takes advantages of the ability of disk storage media to randomly address data in
a short amount of time. Additional considerations include the speed of accessing data following
that initially requested and the anticipation that the following data may also be requested. This
permits multiple users (or processes) access to various data on the disk without regard to the
sequential location of the data. Examples include FAT (FAT12, FAT16, FAT32), exFAT, NTFS,
ReFS, HFS and HFS+, HPFS, APFS, UFS, ext2, ext3, ext4, XFS, btrfs, Files-11, Veritas File System,
VMFS, ZFS, ReiserFS, NSS and ScoutFS. Some disk file systems are journaling file systems or
versioning file systems.

Optical discs
ISO 9660 and Universal Disk Format (UDF) are two common formats that target Compact Discs,
DVDs and Blu-ray discs. Mount Rainier is an extension to UDF supported since 2.6 series of the
Linux kernel and since Windows Vista that facilitates rewriting to DVDs.

Flash file systems

A flash file system considers the special abilities, performance and restrictions of flash memory
devices. Frequently a disk file system can use a flash memory device as the underlying storage
media, but it is much better to use a file system specifically designed for a flash device.[16]

Tape file systems

A tape file system is a file system and tape format designed to store files on tape. Magnetic tapes
are sequential storage media with significantly longer random data access times than disks, posing
challenges to the creation and efficient management of a general-purpose file system.

In a disk file system there is typically a master file directory, and a map of used and free data
regions. Any file additions, changes, or removals require updating the directory and the used/free
maps. Random access to data regions is measured in milliseconds so this system works well for
disks.

Tape requires linear motion to wind and unwind potentially very long reels of media. This tape
motion may take several seconds to several minutes to move the read/write head from one end of
the tape to the other.

Consequently, a master file directory and usage map can be extremely slow and inefficient with
tape. Writing typically involves reading the block usage map to find free blocks for writing,
updating the usage map and directory to add the data, and then advancing the tape to write the
data in the correct spot. Each additional file write requires updating the map and directory and

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writing the data, which may take several seconds to occur for each file.

Tape file systems instead typically allow for the file directory to be spread across the tape
intermixed with the data, referred to as streaming, so that time-consuming and repeated tape
motions are not required to write new data.

However, a side effect of this design is that reading the file directory of a tape usually requires
scanning the entire tape to read all the scattered directory entries. Most data archiving software
that works with tape storage will store a local copy of the tape catalog on a disk file system, so that
adding files to a tape can be done quickly without having to rescan the tape media. The local tape
catalog copy is usually discarded if not used for a specified period of time, at which point the tape
must be re-scanned if it is to be used in the future.

IBM has developed a file system for tape called the Linear Tape File System. The IBM
implementation of this file system has been released as the open-source IBM Linear Tape File
System — Single Drive Edition (LTFS-SDE) product. The Linear Tape File System uses a separate
partition on the tape to record the index meta-data, thereby avoiding the problems associated with
scattering directory entries across the entire tape.

Tape formatting
Writing data to a tape, erasing, or formatting a tape is often a significantly time-consuming process
and can take several hours on large tapes.[a] With many data tape technologies it is not necessary
to format the tape before over-writing new data to the tape. This is due to the inherently
destructive nature of overwriting data on sequential media.

Because of the time it can take to format a tape, typically tapes are pre-formatted so that the tape
user does not need to spend time preparing each new tape for use. All that is usually necessary is to
write an identifying media label to the tape before use, and even this can be automatically written
by software when a new tape is used for the first time.

Database file systems

Another concept for file management is the idea of a database-based file system. Instead of, or in
addition to, hierarchical structured management, files are identified by their characteristics, like
type of file, topic, author, or similar rich metadata.[17]

IBM DB2 for i [18] (formerly known as DB2/400 and DB2 for i5/OS) is a database file system as
part of the object based IBM i[19] operating system (formerly known as OS/400 and i5/OS),
incorporating a single level store and running on IBM Power Systems (formerly known as AS/400
and iSeries), designed by Frank G. Soltis IBM's former chief scientist for IBM i. Around 1978 to
1988 Frank G. Soltis and his team at IBM Rochester had successfully designed and applied
technologies like the database file system where others like Microsoft later failed to accomplish.[20]
These technologies are informally known as 'Fortress Rochester' and were in few basic aspects
extended from early Mainframe technologies but in many ways more advanced from a
technological perspective.

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Some other projects that are not "pure" database file systems but that use some aspects of a
database file system:

Many Web content management systems use a relational DBMS to store and retrieve files. For
example, XHTML files are stored as XML or text fields, while image files are stored as blob
fields; SQL SELECT (with optional XPath) statements retrieve the files, and allow the use of a
sophisticated logic and more rich information associations than "usual file systems." Many
CMSs also have the option of storing only metadata within the database, with the standard
filesystem used to store the content of files.
Very large file systems, embodied by applications like Apache Hadoop and Google File
System, use some database file system concepts.

Transactional file systems

Some programs need to either make multiple file system changes, or, if one or more of the changes
fail for any reason, make none of the changes. For example, a program which is installing or
updating software may write executables, libraries, and/or configuration files. If some of the
writing fails and the software is left partially installed or updated, the software may be broken or
unusable. An incomplete update of a key system utility, such as the command shell, may leave the
entire system in an unusable state.

Transaction processing introduces the atomicity guarantee, ensuring that operations inside of a
transaction are either all committed or the transaction can be aborted and the system discards all
of its partial results. This means that if there is a crash or power failure, after recovery, the stored
state will be consistent. Either the software will be completely installed or the failed installation
will be completely rolled back, but an unusable partial install will not be left on the system.
Transactions also provide the isolation guarantee, meaning that operations within a transaction are
hidden from other threads on the system until the transaction commits, and that interfering
operations on the system will be properly serialized with the transaction.

Windows, beginning with Vista, added transaction support to NTFS, in a feature called
Transactional NTFS, but its use is now discouraged.[21] There are a number of research prototypes
of transactional file systems for UNIX systems, including the Valor file system,[22] Amino,[23] LFS,
[24] and a transactional ext3 file system on the TxOS kernel,[25] as well as transactional file systems

targeting embedded systems, such as TFFS.[26]

Ensuring consistency across multiple file system operations is difficult, if not impossible, without
file system transactions. File locking can be used as a concurrency control mechanism for
individual files, but it typically does not protect the directory structure or file metadata. For
instance, file locking cannot prevent TOCTTOU race conditions on symbolic links. File locking also
cannot automatically roll back a failed operation, such as a software upgrade; this requires
atomicity.

Journaling file systems is one technique used to introduce transaction-level consistency to file
system structures. Journal transactions are not exposed to programs as part of the OS API; they
are only used internally to ensure consistency at the granularity of a single system call.

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Data backup systems typically do not provide support for direct backup of data stored in a
transactional manner, which makes the recovery of reliable and consistent data sets difficult. Most
backup software simply notes what files have changed since a certain time, regardless of the
transactional state shared across multiple files in the overall dataset. As a workaround, some
database systems simply produce an archived state file containing all data up to that point, and the
backup software only backs that up and does not interact directly with the active transactional
databases at all. Recovery requires separate recreation of the database from the state file after the
file has been restored by the backup software.

Network file systems

A network file system is a file system that acts as a client for a remote file access protocol,
providing access to files on a server. Programs using local interfaces can transparently create,
manage and access hierarchical directories and files in remote network-connected computers.
Examples of network file systems include clients for the NFS,[27] AFS, SMB protocols, and file-
system-like clients for FTP and WebDAV.

Shared disk file systems

A shared disk file system is one in which a number of machines (usually servers) all have access to
the same external disk subsystem (usually a storage area network). The file system arbitrates
access to that subsystem, preventing write collisions.[28] Examples include GFS2 from Red Hat,
GPFS, now known as Spectrum Scale, from IBM, SFS from DataPlow, CXFS from SGI, StorNext
from Quantum Corporation and ScoutFS from Versity.

Special file systems

Some file systems expose elements of the operating system as files so they can be acted on via the
file system API. This is common in Unix-like operating systems, and to a lesser extent in other
operating systems. Examples include:

devfs, udev, TOPS-10 expose I/O devices or pseudo-devices as special files

configfs and sysfs expose special files that can be used to query and configure Linux kernel
information
procfs exposes process information as special files

Minimal file system / audio-cassette storage

In the 1970s disk and digital tape devices were too expensive for some early microcomputer users.
An inexpensive basic data storage system was devised that used common audio cassette tape.

When the system needed to write data, the user was notified to press "RECORD" on the cassette
recorder, then press "RETURN" on the keyboard to notify the system that the cassette recorder was
recording. The system wrote a sound to provide time synchronization, then modulated sounds that

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encoded a prefix, the data, a checksum and a suffix. When the system needed to read data, the user
was instructed to press "PLAY" on the cassette recorder. The system would listen to the sounds on
the tape waiting until a burst of sound could be recognized as the synchronization. The system
would then interpret subsequent sounds as data. When the data read was complete, the system
would notify the user to press "STOP" on the cassette recorder. It was primitive, but it (mostly)
worked. Data was stored sequentially, usually in an unnamed format, although some systems (such
as the Commodore PET series of computers) did allow the files to be named. Multiple sets of data
could be written and located by fast-forwarding the tape and observing at the tape counter to find
the approximate start of the next data region on the tape. The user might have to listen to the
sounds to find the right spot to begin playing the next data region. Some implementations even
included audible sounds interspersed with the data.

Flat file systems

In a flat file system, there are no subdirectories; directory entries for all files are stored in a single
directory.

When floppy disk media was first available this type of file system was adequate due to the
relatively small amount of data space available. CP/M machines featured a flat file system, where
files could be assigned to one of 16 user areas and generic file operations narrowed to work on one
instead of defaulting to work on all of them. These user areas were no more than special attributes
associated with the files; that is, it was not necessary to define specific quota for each of these areas
and files could be added to groups for as long as there was still free storage space on the disk. The
early Apple Macintosh also featured a flat file system, the Macintosh File System. It was unusual in
that the file management program (Macintosh Finder) created the illusion of a partially
hierarchical filing system on top of EMFS. This structure required every file to have a unique name,
even if it appeared to be in a separate folder. IBM DOS/360 and OS/360 store entries for all files
on a disk pack (volume) in a directory on the pack called a Volume Table of Contents (VTOC).

While simple, flat file systems become awkward as the number of files grows and makes it difficult
to organize data into related groups of files.

A recent addition to the flat file system family is Amazon's S3, a remote storage service, which is
intentionally simplistic to allow users the ability to customize how their data is stored. The only
constructs are buckets (imagine a disk drive of unlimited size) and objects (similar, but not
identical to the standard concept of a file). Advanced file management is allowed by being able to
use nearly any character (including '/') in the object's name, and the ability to select subsets of the
bucket's content based on identical prefixes.

Implementations
An operating system (OS) typically supports one or more file systems. Sometimes an OS and its file
system are so tightly interwoven that it is difficult to describe them independently.

An OS typically provides file system access to the user. Often an OS provides command line

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interface, such as Unix shell, Windows Command Prompt and PowerShell, and OpenVMS DCL. An
OS often also provides graphical user interface file browsers such as MacOS Finder and Windows
File Explorer.

Unix and Unix-like operating systems

Unix-like operating systems create a virtual file system, which makes all the files on all the devices
appear to exist in a single hierarchy. This means, in those systems, there is one root directory, and
every file existing on the system is located under it somewhere. Unix-like systems can use a RAM
disk or network shared resource as its root directory.

Unix-like systems assign a device name to each device, but this is not how the files on that device
are accessed. Instead, to gain access to files on another device, the operating system must first be
informed where in the directory tree those files should appear. This process is called mounting a
file system. For example, to access the files on a CD-ROM, one must tell the operating system
"Take the file system from this CD-ROM and make it appear under such-and-such directory." The
directory given to the operating system is called the mount point – it might, for example, be /
media. The /media directory exists on many Unix systems (as specified in the Filesystem
Hierarchy Standard) and is intended specifically for use as a mount point for removable media
such as CDs, DVDs, USB drives or floppy disks. It may be empty, or it may contain subdirectories
for mounting individual devices. Generally, only the administrator (i.e. root user) may authorize
the mounting of file systems.

Unix-like operating systems often include software and tools that assist in the mounting process
and provide it new functionality. Some of these strategies have been coined "auto-mounting" as a
reflection of their purpose.

In many situations, file systems other than the root need to be available as soon as the
operating system has booted. All Unix-like systems therefore provide a facility for mounting file
systems at boot time. System administrators define these file systems in the configuration file
fstab (vfstab in Solaris), which also indicates options and mount points.
In some situations, there is no need to mount certain file systems at boot time, although their
use may be desired thereafter. There are some utilities for Unix-like systems that allow the
mounting of predefined file systems upon demand.
Removable media allow programs and data to be transferred between machines without a
physical connection. Common examples include USB flash drives, CD-ROMs, and DVDs.
Utilities have therefore been developed to detect the presence and availability of a medium and
then mount that medium without any user intervention.
Progressive Unix-like systems have also introduced a concept called supermounting; see, for
example, the Linux supermount-ng project (http://sourceforge.net/projects/supermount-ng). For
example, a floppy disk that has been supermounted can be physically removed from the
system. Under normal circumstances, the disk should have been synchronized and then
unmounted before its removal. Provided synchronization has occurred, a different disk can be
inserted into the drive. The system automatically notices that the disk has changed and
updates the mount point contents to reflect the new medium.
An automounter will automatically mount a file system when a reference is made to the
directory atop which it should be mounted. This is usually used for file systems on network

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servers, rather than relying on events such as the insertion of media, as would be appropriate
for removable media.

Linux
Linux supports numerous file systems, but common choices for the system disk on a block device
include the ext* family (ext2, ext3 and ext4), XFS, JFS, and btrfs. For raw flash without a flash
translation layer (FTL) or Memory Technology Device (MTD), there are UBIFS, JFFS2 and YAFFS,
among others. SquashFS is a common compressed read-only file system.

Solaris
Solaris in earlier releases defaulted to (non-journaled or non-logging) UFS for bootable and
supplementary file systems. Solaris defaulted to, supported, and extended UFS.

Support for other file systems and significant enhancements were added over time, including
Veritas Software Corp. (journaling) VxFS, Sun Microsystems (clustering) QFS, Sun Microsystems
(journaling) UFS, and Sun Microsystems (open source, poolable, 128 bit compressible, and error-
correcting) ZFS.

Kernel extensions were added to Solaris to allow for bootable Veritas VxFS operation. Logging or
journaling was added to UFS in Sun's Solaris 7. Releases of Solaris 10, Solaris Express,
OpenSolaris, and other open source variants of the Solaris operating system later supported
bootable ZFS.

Logical Volume Management allows for spanning a file system across multiple devices for the
purpose of adding redundancy, capacity, and/or throughput. Legacy environments in Solaris may
use Solaris Volume Manager (formerly known as Solstice DiskSuite). Multiple operating systems
(including Solaris) may use Veritas Volume Manager. Modern Solaris based operating systems
eclipse the need for volume management through leveraging virtual storage pools in ZFS.

macOS
macOS (formerly Mac OS X) uses the Apple File System (APFS), which in 2017 replaced a file
system inherited from classic Mac OS called HFS Plus (HFS+). Apple also uses the term "Mac OS
Extended" for HFS+.[29] HFS Plus is a metadata-rich and case-preserving but (usually) case-
insensitive file system. Due to the Unix roots of macOS, Unix permissions were added to HFS Plus.
Later versions of HFS Plus added journaling to prevent corruption of the file system structure and
introduced a number of optimizations to the allocation algorithms in an attempt to defragment
files automatically without requiring an external defragmenter.

File names can be up to 255 characters. HFS Plus uses Unicode to store file names. On macOS, the
filetype can come from the type code, stored in file's metadata, or the filename extension.

HFS Plus has three kinds of links: Unix-style hard links, Unix-style symbolic links, and aliases.
Aliases are designed to maintain a link to their original file even if they are moved or renamed; they
are not interpreted by the file system itself, but by the File Manager code in userland.

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macOS 10.13 High Sierra, which was announced on June 5, 2017, at Apple's WWDC event, uses the
Apple File System on solid-state drives.

macOS also supported the UFS file system, derived from the BSD Unix Fast File System via
NeXTSTEP. However, as of Mac OS X Leopard, macOS could no longer be installed on a UFS
volume, nor can a pre-Leopard system installed on a UFS volume be upgraded to Leopard.[30] As
of Mac OS X Lion UFS support was completely dropped.

Newer versions of macOS are capable of reading and writing to the legacy FAT file systems (16 and
32) common on Windows. They are also capable of reading the newer NTFS file systems for
Windows. In order to write to NTFS file systems on macOS versions prior to Mac OS X Snow
Leopard third-party software is necessary. Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and later allow writing
to NTFS file systems, but only after a non-trivial system setting change (third-party software exists
that automates this).[31]

Finally, macOS supports reading and writing of the exFAT file system since Mac OS X Snow
Leopard, starting from version 10.6.5.[32]

OS/2
OS/2 1.2 introduced the High Performance File System (HPFS). HPFS supports mixed case file
names in different code pages, long file names (255 characters), more efficient use of disk space, an
architecture that keeps related items close to each other on the disk volume, less fragmentation of
data, extent-based space allocation, a B+ tree structure for directories, and the root directory
located at the midpoint of the disk, for faster average access. A journaled filesystem (JFS) was
shipped in 1999.

PC-BSD
PC-BSD is a desktop version of FreeBSD, which inherits FreeBSD's ZFS support, similarly to
FreeNAS. The new graphical installer of PC-BSD can handle / (root) on ZFS and RAID-Z pool
installs and disk encryption using Geli right from the start in an easy convenient (GUI) way. The
current PC-BSD 9.0+ 'Isotope Edition' has ZFS filesystem version 5 and ZFS storage pool version
28.

Plan 9
Plan 9 from Bell Labs treats everything as a file and accesses all objects as a file would be accessed
(i.e., there is no ioctl or mmap): networking, graphics, debugging, authentication, capabilities,
encryption, and other services are accessed via I/O operations on file descriptors. The 9P protocol
removes the difference between local and remote files. File systems in Plan 9 are organized with
the help of private, per-process namespaces, allowing each process to have a different view of the
many file systems that provide resources in a distributed system.

The Inferno operating system shares these concepts with Plan 9.

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Microsoft Windows
Windows makes use of the FAT, NTFS, exFAT, Live
File System and ReFS file systems (the last of these
is only supported and usable in Windows Server
2012, Windows Server 2016, Windows 8, Windows
8.1, and Windows 10; Windows cannot boot from
it).

Windows uses a drive letter abstraction at the user

level to distinguish one disk or partition from Directory listing in a Windows command shell
another. For example, the path C:\WINDOWS
represents a directory WINDOWS on the partition
represented by the letter C. Drive C: is most commonly used for the primary hard disk drive
partition, on which Windows is usually installed and from which it boots. This "tradition" has
become so firmly ingrained that bugs exist in many applications which make assumptions that the
drive that the operating system is installed on is C. The use of drive letters, and the tradition of
using "C" as the drive letter for the primary hard disk drive partition, can be traced to MS-DOS,
where the letters A and B were reserved for up to two floppy disk drives. This in turn derived from
CP/M in the 1970s, and ultimately from IBM's CP/CMS of 1967.

FAT
The family of FAT file systems is supported by almost all operating systems for personal
computers, including all versions of Windows and MS-DOS/PC DOS, OS/2, and DR-DOS.
(PC DOS is an OEM version of MS-DOS, MS-DOS was originally based on SCP's 86-DOS. DR-DOS
was based on Digital Research's Concurrent DOS, a successor of CP/M-86.) The FAT file systems
are therefore well-suited as a universal exchange format between computers and devices of most
any type and age.

The FAT file system traces its roots back to an (incompatible) 8-bit FAT precursor in Standalone
Disk BASIC and the short-lived MDOS/MIDAS project.

Over the years, the file system has been expanded from FAT12 to FAT16 and FAT32. Various
features have been added to the file system including subdirectories, codepage support, extended
attributes, and long filenames. Third parties such as Digital Research have incorporated optional
support for deletion tracking, and volume/directory/file-based multi-user security schemes to
support file and directory passwords and permissions such as read/write/execute/delete access
rights. Most of these extensions are not supported by Windows.

The FAT12 and FAT16 file systems had a limit on the number of entries in the root directory of the
file system and had restrictions on the maximum size of FAT-formatted disks or partitions.

FAT32 addresses the limitations in FAT12 and FAT16, except for the file size limit of close to 4 GB,
but it remains limited compared to NTFS.

FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 also have a limit of eight characters for the file name, and three

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characters for the extension (such as .exe). This is commonly referred to as the 8.3 filename limit.
VFAT, an optional extension to FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32, introduced in Windows 95 and
Windows NT 3.5, allowed long file names (LFN) to be stored in the FAT file system in a backwards
compatible fashion.

NTFS
NTFS, introduced with the Windows NT operating system in 1993, allowed ACL-based permission
control. Other features also supported by NTFS include hard links, multiple file streams, attribute
indexing, quota tracking, sparse files, encryption, compression, and reparse points (directories
working as mount-points for other file systems, symlinks, junctions, remote storage links).

exFAT
exFAT has certain advantages over NTFS with regard to file system overhead.

exFAT is not backward compatible with FAT file systems such as FAT12, FAT16 or FAT32. The file
system is supported with newer Windows systems, such as Windows XP, Windows Server 2003,
Windows Vista, Windows 2008, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and Windows
11.

exFAT is supported in macOS starting with version 10.6.5 (Snow Leopard).[32] Support in other
operating systems is sparse since implementing support for exFAT requires a license. exFAT is the
only file system that is fully supported on both macOS and Windows that can hold files larger than
4 GB.[33][34]

OpenVMS

MVS
Prior to the introduction of VSAM, OS/360 systems implemented a hybrid file system. The system
was designed to easily support removable disk packs, so the information relating to all files on one
disk (volume in IBM terminology) is stored on that disk in a flat system file called the Volume
Table of Contents (VTOC). The VTOC stores all metadata for the file. Later a hierarchical directory
structure was imposed with the introduction of the System Catalog, which can optionally catalog
files (datasets) on resident and removable volumes. The catalog only contains information to relate
a dataset to a specific volume. If the user requests access to a dataset on an offline volume, and
they have suitable privileges, the system will attempt to mount the required volume. Cataloged and
non-cataloged datasets can still be accessed using information in the VTOC, bypassing the catalog,
if the required volume id is provided to the OPEN request. Still later the VTOC was indexed to
speed up access.

Conversational Monitor System

The IBM Conversational Monitor System (CMS) component of VM/370 uses a separate flat file

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system for each virtual disk (minidisk). File data and control information are scattered and
intermixed. The anchor is a record called the Master File Directory (MFD), always located in the
fourth block on the disk. Originally CMS used fixed-length 800-byte blocks, but later versions used
larger size blocks up to 4K. Access to a data record requires two levels of indirection, where the
file's directory entry (called a File Status Table (FST) entry) points to blocks containing a list of
addresses of the individual records.

AS/400 file system

Data on the AS/400 and its successors consists of system objects mapped into the system virtual
address space in a single-level store. Many types of objects are defined including the directories
and files found in other file systems. File objects, along with other types of objects, form the basis
of the AS/400's support for an integrated relational database.

Other file systems

The Prospero File System is a file system based on the Virtual System Model.[35] The system
was created by B. Clifford Neuman of the Information Sciences Institute at the University of
Southern California.
RSRE FLEX file system - written in ALGOL 68
The file system of the Michigan Terminal System (MTS) is interesting because: (i) it provides
"line files" where record lengths and line numbers are associated as metadata with each record
in the file, lines can be added, replaced, updated with the same or different length records, and
deleted anywhere in the file without the need to read and rewrite the entire file; (ii) using
program keys files may be shared or permitted to commands and programs in addition to users
and groups; and (iii) there is a comprehensive file locking mechanism that protects both the
file's data and its metadata.[36][37]
TempleOS uses RedSea, a file system made by Terry A. Davis.[38]

Limitations

Design limitations
File systems limit storable data capacity – generally driven by the typical size of storage devices at
the time the file system is designed and anticipated into the foreseeable future.

Since storage sizes have increased at near exponential rate (see Moore's law), newer storage
devices often exceed existing file system limits within only a few years after introduction. This
requires new file systems with ever increasing capacity.

With higher capacity, the need for capabilities and therefore complexity increases as well. File
system complexity typically varies proportionally with available storage capacity. Capacity issues
aside, the file systems of early 1980s home computers with 50 KB to 512 KB of storage would not
be a reasonable choice for modern storage systems with hundreds of gigabytes of capacity.
Likewise, modern file systems would not be a reasonable choice for these early systems, since the

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complexity of modern file system structures would quickly consume the limited capacity of early
storage systems.

Converting the type of a file system

It may be advantageous or necessary to have files in a different file system than they currently
exist. Reasons include the need for an increase in the space requirements beyond the limits of the
current file system. The depth of path may need to be increased beyond the restrictions of the file
system. There may be performance or reliability considerations. Providing access to another
operating system which does not support the existing file system is another reason.

In-place conversion
In some cases conversion can be done in-place, although migrating the file system is more
conservative, as it involves a creating a copy of the data and is recommended.[39] On Windows,
FAT and FAT32 file systems can be converted to NTFS via the convert.exe utility, but not the
reverse.[39] On Linux, ext2 can be converted to ext3 (and converted back), and ext3 can be
converted to ext4 (but not back),[40] and both ext3 and ext4 can be converted to btrfs, and
converted back until the undo information is deleted.[41] These conversions are possible due to
using the same format for the file data itself, and relocating the metadata into empty space, in
some cases using sparse file support.[41]

Migrating to a different file system

Migration has the disadvantage of requiring additional space although it may be faster. The best
case is if there is unused space on media which will contain the final file system.

For example, to migrate a FAT32 file system to an ext2 file system, a new ext2 file system is
created. Then the data from the FAT32 file system is copied to the ext2 one, and the old file system
is deleted.

An alternative, when there is not sufficient space to retain the original file system until the new one
is created, is to use a work area (such as a removable media). This takes longer but has the benefit
of producing a backup.

Long file paths and long file names

In hierarchical file systems, files are accessed by means of a path that is a branching list of
directories containing the file. Different file systems have different limits on the depth of the path.
File systems also have a limit on the length of an individual file name.

Copying files with long names or located in paths of significant depth from one file system to
another may cause undesirable results. This depends on how the utility doing the copying handles
the discrepancy.

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See also
Comparison of file systems
Disk quota
List of file systems
List of Unix commands
Directory structure
Shared resource
Distributed file system
Distributed Data Management Architecture
File manager
File system fragmentation
Filename extension
Global file system
Object storage
Computer data storage
Storage efficiency
Virtual file system

Notes
a. An LTO-6 2.5 TB tape requires more than 4 hours to write at 160 MB/Sec

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de Boyne Pollard, Jonathan (1996). "Disc and volume size limits" (http://jdebp.eu/FGA/os2-dis
c-and-volume-size-limits.html). Frequently Given Answers. Retrieved February 9, 2005.
"OS/2 corrective service fix JR09427" (ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/fixes/v4w
arp/english-us/jr09427/JR09427.TXT). IBM. Retrieved February 9, 2005.
"Attribute - $EA_INFORMATION (0xD0)" (http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/ntfs/attributes/ea_inf
ormation.html). NTFS Information, Linux-NTFS Project. Retrieved February 9, 2005.
"Attribute - $EA (0xE0)" (http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/ntfs/attributes/ea.html). NTFS
Information, Linux-NTFS Project. Retrieved February 9, 2005.
"Attribute - $STANDARD_INFORMATION (0x10)" (http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/ntfs/attribute
s/standard_information.html). NTFS Information, Linux-NTFS Project. Retrieved February 21,
2005.
"Technical Note TN1150: HFS Plus Volume Format" (https://developer.apple.com/legacy/librar
y/technotes/tn/tn1150.html). Apple Inc. Retrieved September 22, 2015.
Brian Carrier (2005). File System Forensic Analysis (http://www.digital-evidence.org/fsfa/).
Addison Wesley.

Further reading

Books
Arpaci-Dusseau, Remzi H.; Arpaci-Dusseau, Andrea C. (2014). Operating Systems: Three
Easy Pieces (http://www.ostep.org). Arpaci-Dusseau Books.

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File system - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_system

Carrier, Brian (2005). File System Forensic Analysis (http://www.digital-evidence.org/fsfa/).

Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-321-26817-2.
Custer, Helen (1994). Inside the Windows NT File System (https://archive.org/details/insidewin
dowsntf00cust). Microsoft Press. ISBN 1-55615-660-X.
Giampaolo, Dominic (1999). Practical File System Design with the Be File System (http://ww
w.nobius.org/practical-file-system-design.pdf) (PDF). Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
ISBN 1-55860-497-9. Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20180903092510/http://www.nobiu
s.org/practical-file-system-design.pdf) (PDF) from the original on 2018-09-03. Retrieved
2019-12-15.
McCoy, Kirby (1990). VMS File System Internals. VAX - VMS Series. Digital Press.
ISBN 1-55558-056-4.
Mitchell, Stan (1997). Inside the Windows 95 File System (http://oreilly.com/catalog/156592200
X). O'Reilly. ISBN 1-56592-200-X.
Nagar, Rajeev (1997). Windows NT File System Internals : A Developer's Guide (https://archiv
e.org/details/windowsntfilesys00naga). O'Reilly. ISBN 978-1-56592-249-5.
Pate, Steve D. (2003). UNIX Filesystems: Evolution, Design, and Implementation (http://eu.wile
y.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471164836.html). Wiley. ISBN 0-471-16483-6.
Rosenblum, Mendel (1994). The Design and Implementation of a Log-Structured File System.
The Springer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science. Springer.
ISBN 0-7923-9541-7.
Russinovich, Mark; Solomon, David A.; Ionescu, Alex (2009). "File Systems". Windows
Internals (5th ed.). Microsoft Press. ISBN 978-0-7356-2530-3.
Prabhakaran, Vijayan (2006). IRON File Systems (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~vijayan/vijayan-thes
is.pdf). PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Silberschatz, Abraham; Galvin, Peter Baer; Gagne, Greg (2004). "Storage Management".
Operating System Concepts (7th ed.). Wiley. ISBN 0-471-69466-5.
Tanenbaum, Andrew S. (2007). Modern operating Systems (http://www.pearsonhighered.com/p
roduct?ISBN=0136006639) (3rd ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-600663-3.
Tanenbaum, Andrew S.; Woodhull, Albert S. (2006). Operating Systems: Design and
Implementation (http://www.pearsonhighered.com/pearsonhigheredus/educator/product/produc
ts_detail.page?isbn=0-13-142938-8) (3rd ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-142938-8.

Online
Benchmarking Filesystems (outdated) (http://linuxgazette.net/102/piszcz.html) by Justin Piszcz,
Linux Gazette 102, May 2004
Benchmarking Filesystems Part II (http://linuxgazette.net/122/piszcz.html) using kernel 2.6, by
Justin Piszcz, Linux Gazette 122, January 2006
Filesystems (ext3, ReiserFS, XFS, JFS) comparison on Debian Etch (http://www.debian-admini
stration.org/articles/388) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20080913112251/http://www.de
bian-administration.org/articles/388) 2008-09-13 at the Wayback Machine 2006
Interview With the People Behind JFS, ReiserFS & XFS (http://www.osnews.com/story.php?ne
ws_id=69)
Journal File System Performance (outdated) (https://web.archive.org/web/20060313074847/htt
p://www.open-mag.com/features/Vol_18/filesystems/filesystems.htm): ReiserFS, JFS, and
Ext3FS show their merits on a fast RAID appliance

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Journaled Filesystem Benchmarks (outdated) (https://web.archive.org/web/20051125112444/ht

tp://staff.osuosl.org/~kveton/fs/): A comparison of ReiserFS, XFS, JFS, ext3 & ext2
Large List of File System Summaries (most recent update 2006-11-19) (http://www.osdata.com/
system/logical/logical.htm)
Linux File System Benchmarks (https://web.archive.org/web/20190503084749/http://fsbench.n
etnation.com/) v2.6 kernel with a stress on CPU usage
"Linux 2.6 Filesystem Benchmarks (Older)" (https://web.archive.org/web/20160415152542/htt
p://www.techyblog.com/linux-news/linux-filesystem-benchmark.html). Archived from the original
on 2016-04-15. Retrieved 2019-12-16.
Linux large file support (outdated) (http://www.suse.de/~aj/linux_lfs.html)
Local Filesystems for Windows (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/LocFileSys.ms
px)
Overview of some filesystems (outdated) (https://web.archive.org/web/20060819215504/http://
osdev.berlios.de/osd-fs.html)
Sparse files support (outdated) (http://www.lrdev.com/lr/unix/sparsefile.html)
Jeremy Reimer (March 16, 2008). "From BFS to ZFS: past, present, and future of file systems"
(https://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/past-present-future-file-systems.ars). arstechnica.com.
Retrieved 2008-03-18.

External links
"Filesystem Specifications - Links & Whitepapers" (https://web.archive.org/web/201511031920
57/http://www.forensics.nl/filesystems). Archived from the original on 2015-11-03.
Interesting File System Projects (http://filesystems.org/all-projects.html)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File_system&oldid=1250495473"

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