A file system (filesystem) is means to organize data expected to be retained after a program terminates by providing procedures to store, retrieve

and update data, as well as manage the available space on the device(s) which contain it. A file system organizes data in an efficient manner and is tuned to the specific characteristics of the device. There is usually a tight coupling between the operating system and the file system. Some filesystems provide mechanisms to control access to the data and metadata. Insuring reliability is a major responsibility of a filesystem. Some filesystems provide a means for multiple programs to update data in the same file nearly at the same time. File systems are used on data storage devices such as magnetic storage disks or optical discs to maintain the physical location of thecomputer files. They may provide access to data on a file server by acting as clients for a network protocol (e.g., NFS, SMB, or 9P clients), or they may be virtual and exist only as an access method for virtual data (e.g., procfs). This is distinguished from a directory service and registry.

Also referred to as simply a file system or filesystem. The system that an operating system or program uses to organize and keep track of files. For example, a hierarchical file system is one that uses directories to organize files into a tree structure. Although the operating system provides its own file management system, you can buy separate file management systems. These systems interact smoothly with the operating system but provide more features, such as improved backup procedures and stricter file protection.

File Allocation Table (FAT aka. Gmann)

A table that the operating system uses to locate files on a disk. Due tofragmentation, a file may be divided into many sections that are scattered around the disk. The FAT keeps track of all these pieces. In DOS systems, FATs are stored just after the boot sector. The FAT system for older versions of Windows 95 is called FAT16, and the one for new versions of Windows 95 and Windows 98 is called FAT32.

FAT32
In order to overcome the size limit of FAT16, while at the same time allowing DOS (disk operating system) real mode code to handle the format, and without reducing available conventional memory unnecessarily, Microsoft expanded the cluster size yet again, calling the new revision FAT32. Cluster values are represented by 32-bit numbers, of which 28 bits are used to hold the cluster number. The boot sector uses a 32-bit field for the sector count, limiting the FAT32 volume size to 2 TB for sector size 512; compare the size limits given below.
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FAT32 was introduced with Windows 95 OSR2, although reformatting was needed to use it, and DriveSpace 3 (the version that came with Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows 98) never supported it. Windows 98 introduced a utility to convert existing hard disks from FAT16 to FAT32 without loss of data. In the NT line, native support for FAT32 arrived in Windows 2000. A free FAT32 driver for Windows NT 4.0 was available from Winternals, a company later acquired by Microsoft. Since the acquisition the driver is no longer officially available. The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GB minus 1 byte or 4 294 967 295 (2 1) bytes. This limit is a consequence of the file length entry in the directory table and would also affect huge FAT16 partitions with a sufficient sector size.
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Video applications, large databases, and some other

software easily exceed this limit. Larger files require another file system.

NTFS (New Technology File System)

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is the standard file system of Windows NT, including its later

versions Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008,Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

NTFS supersedes the FAT file system as the preferred file system for Microsofts Windowsoperating systems. NTFS has several improvements over FAT and HPFS (High Performance File System) such as improved support for metadata and the use of advanced data structures to improve performance, reliability, and disk space utilization, plus additional extensions such as security access control lists (ACL) and file system journaling.
NTFS has features to improve reliability, such as transaction logs to help recover from disk failures. To control access to files, you can set permissions for directories and/or individual files. NTFS files are not accessible from other operating systems such as DOS. For large applications, NTFS supports spanning volumes, which means files and directories can be spread out across several physical disks.

NTFS (NT file system; sometimes New Technology File System) is the file system that theWindows NT operating system uses for storing and retrieving files on a hard disk. NTFS is the Windows NT equivalent of the Windows 95 file allocation table (FAT) and the OS/2 High Performance File System (HPFS). However, NTFS offers a number of improvements over FAT and HPFS in terms of performance, extendibility, and security. Notable features of NTFS include:

Use of a b-tree directory scheme to keep track of file clusters Information about a file's cluster and other data is stored with each cluster, not just a governing table (as FAT is) Support for very large files (up to 2 to the 64th power or approximately 16 billion bytes in size) An access control list (ACL) that lets a server administrator control who can access specific files Integrated file compression Support for names based on Unicode Support for long file names as well as "8 by 3" names Data security on both removable and fixed disks

How NTFS Works

When a hard disk is formatted (initialized), it is divided into partitions or major divisions of the total physical hard disk space. Within each partition, the operating system keeps track of all the files that are stored by that operating system. Each file is actually stored on the hard disk in one or more clusters or disk spaces of a predefined uniform size. Using NTFS, the sizes of clusters range from 512 bytes to 64 kilobytes. Windows NT provides a recommended default cluster size for any given drive size. For example, for a 4 GB (gigabyte) drive, the default cluster size is 4 KB (kilobytes). Note that clusters are indivisible. Even the smallest file takes up one cluster and a 4.1 KB file takes up two clusters (or 8 KB) on a 4 KB cluster system. The selection of the cluster size is a trade-off between efficient use of disk space and the number of disk accesses required to access a file. In general, using NTFS, the larger the hard disk the larger the default cluster size, since it's assumed that a system user will prefer to increase performance (fewer disk accesses) at the expense of some amount of space inefficiency. When a file is created using NTFS, a record about the file is created in a special file, the Master File Table (MFT). The record is used to locate a file's possibly scattered clusters. NTFS tries to find contiguous storage space that will hold the entire file (all of its clusters). Each file contains, along with its data content, a description of its attributes (its metadata).