What is a File System

You’ve probably heard of plenty of terms being bandied about when people talk about files systems, such as FAT, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS, not too mention partition tables and others. If you have no idea what they all mean, and there are many people who don’t, then you would probably like to know the answer to the question "what is a file system?".  This article is going to change your perceptions, and after you’re done reading you’ll know exactly what each of these terms means.

First of all, we need to know what is a file system. Basically, a file system is a method in which your computer manages all of the files that are stored on its hard drive disk. Most computers have thousands and thousand of files saved on them. If it wasn’t for an organized file management system, the computer would be incredibly slow, and it might not even work at all.

This is quite understandable really when you think about just how much stuff there is piled up on your own office for example, and how much time it would take to search for anything that is buried in amongst it all. Now just imagine if all of that mess in your office was multiplied a thousand times. This is probably the scenario that would face your computer if it wasn’t for its efficient and highly organized filing system. So what is a file system to your computer? The answer is, everything!

Just as there are thousands of people in the world who would all organize their own office differently, there is a whole batch of different filing systems out there too, all offering a variety of different features. There are though, several key functions in filing systems that none can do without:

Efficient use of available hard drive space to store all of the necessary files.The organized cataloging of every file on a hard disk in order for retrieval to be quick and reliable.Provision of basic tools to enable the user to conduct basic operations like saving, deleting, renaming, copying and moving.A data structure that must be provided so that the computer can boot from the file system.

Of course, there are many file systems that go much further than these basic system requirements, offering extra functionality such as encryption, compression, password protection, permissions and file streams.

In order to know in detail about what is a file system, we need to take a look at some of the most popular file systems.

FAT stands for ‘File Allocation Table’ and it was created way back in 1977 by Microsoft. Despite its age, FAT remains quite widely used even today, especially as the preferred filing system for high capacity, portable storage devices such as flash drives and floppy drive media.

Microsoft used FAT as its primary file system in virtually all of its available operating systems since MS-DOS right through to Windows ME. However, while FAT is still supported on newer Microsoft operating systems, the NTFS system is now the primary option.

Over its lifetime there have been a number of advancements in the FAT file system, mostly because of the requirements to support bigger and bigger hard drives and larger sized files. This can make understanding what is a file system more complicated.

There are three versions of FAT detailed below:

FAT12 – This was the first ever FAT system, released during 1997. It was brought out before MS-DOS even, and remained as Microsoft’s primary filing system up until the release of MS-DOS 4.0. Drive sizes up to 32MB can be supported by FAT12.FAT16 – The FAT16 edition was the second implementation, first coming out in 1988. Beginning as Microsoft’s primary file system with the MS-DOS 4.0 operating system, it remained so up until Windows 95 was released 8 years later. Drive sizes up to 2GB can be supported with FAT16.FAT32 – The latest version of the FAT, released in 1996 in conjunction with Windows 95 OSR2. FAT32 was the primary file system choice with that system up until Windows ME. Drive sizes of up to 8 GB are supported by FAT32.

You won’t know what is a file system until you know about NTFS. NTFS stands for ‘New Technology File System’ and was originally introduced during 1993 by Microsoft along with the Windows NT 3.1 operating system. Hard drive sizes of up to 256TB can be supported with NTFS.

Microsoft has made NTFS the primary filing system for use in the Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 7, Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems. Also, NTFS is primarily used in the Windows Server operating system series.

FAT was the primary filing system for any Microsoft operating system that predates these, but it remains supported even now, along side NTFS.

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