Computer File Systems

Computer File Systems
A computer file system is a way that manages how and where data on a storage disk(hard disk drive) is stored, accessed and managed.File system provides the capability to create, modify, and delete files, etc.

Types of computer file systems

FAT16 File System

File Allocation Table (FAT) file system is a simple file system. FAT is usually for small disks and simple directory structures, because of FAT system we can locate data oh hard disk and if FAT lost then we cannot locate data on hard disk.

FAT32 File System

FAT32 allows more efficient use of hard drive space and allowed for partitions up to 8GB using 4KB cluster sizes, hence we can say that FAT32 uses smaller cluster.FAT 32 is in support of disk of 2TB (2048GB) at most, but it is not in support of partitions less than 512MB.

HPFS (High Performance File System)

High Performance File System (HPFS) supports Long File Name and it has higher error correcting capability than FAT. Windows NT also supports HPFS. HPFS has many similler features with NTFS, Long File Name present in HPFS.

NTFS (New Technology File System)

NTFS (New Technology File System) introduced with the Windows NT operating system in 1993, allowed ACL-based permission control.
NTFS is the standard file system of all version of Windows systems like NT, 2000, XP,  7 etc. NTFS is a good replacement of FAT file system .It is reliability and it have good utilization ratio of disk space. It also provides  access control list (ACL) and file system journaling.

Some of feature of NTFS are long file name, data protection and recovery, implements security and storing files in large hard disk and multiple hard disks.

EXT File Systems

There are other members in the extended file system family which is used for linux system:

extended file system(ext)
second extended file system(ext2)
third extended file system(ext3)
fourth extended file system(ext4)

Maximum individual file size for ext2 is from 16 GB to 2 TB and overall file system size can be from 2 TB to 32 TB

Supports huge individual file size and overall file system size.
Maximum individual file size for ext4 is from 16 GB to 16 TB and overall maximum  size is 1 EB (exabyte).

Comparing Filesystem Features

Operating System Supported File Systems

DOS FAT16
Windows 3.x FAT16
Windows 95A FAT16
Windows 95 OSR2 FAT16, FAT32
Windows 98 FAT16, FAT32
Windows 98SE FAT16, FAT32
Windows NT 4 FAT16, NTFS
Windows 2000 FAT16, FAT32, NTFS