UNIVERSITY OF BENIN

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

SUBJECT: CSC411
TOPIC: FILE SYSTEM IN MICROSOFT WINDOWS
MATRICNUMBER: PSC1603911
 FILE SYSTEMS IN MICROSOFT WINDOWS
Modern personal computers must have an operating system to run programs like
application programs. The Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, UNIX and LINUX are the
examples of operating system for a personal computer. An operating system is
behaved like an interface between the computer hardware and software. The
functions of an operating system are processor management, memory
management, security, device management, and control over system
performance, job accounting, and error detecting aids, coordination between
other software and users and file management. Now we will discuss about the
one of important function which named as file management. The file system in OS
is usually organized into directories for efficient usage. The directories may have
files or other directions. For file management an OS does these activities; keeping
the track of users, location, status and information, allocate and de-allocate the
resources and take the decision that gets resources. The OS provides security to a
system by setting a password or other this type of techniques. A file system is a
data type that is defined as the collection of associated information. A file is
actually contains a sequence of bits, bytes, records and lines whose significance is
defined by a file users or a file creator. The related record or information of a file
is stored on a secondary storage device like optical disk, magnetic disk and
magnetic tapes. The important features of file system are inventor, name,
partition identifier, native operating system, based sector allocation, file
allocation, namespace, maximum files and maximum file name size, maximum
volume size and date handled. The types of date which a file system supports are
creation date, access date, modified date, changed date and backed up date. The
creation date is that date when a file is created, and when we working with that
file it does not change. The access date is the date when a file is last time
accessed although the access may be a simple move or open. And the modified
date is the date when there are some changes to a file occurred, and the backed
up date is the date of last backed up of a file. The personal computer stores the
records on a number of storage media including optical disks, magnetic tapes and
magnetic disks. The operating system is originates by its storage media to specify
the logical storage unit called file. The file is mapped onto that storage or physical
devices by an operating system. The data could not be written on secondary
storage if it is not within a file. Basically the file is the representation of programs
(objects & source). A data file can be a binary, numeric, alphanumeric and
alphabetic. A file is actually an adjacent logical address space. The characteristics
and structure of a file is defined by its own type. Some common types of a file
structure are none, simple record structure and complex record structure. The file
structure none represents that a file is a sequence of bits, bytes and words. The
simple record structure represents lines, variable length or fixed length. And the
complex structure defined the formatted documents and re locatable load
documents

File systems under Microsoft Windows

Disk file systems

A disk file system is a file system designed for the storage of files on a data storage
device, most commonly a disk drive, which might be directly or indirectly
connected to the computer. Examples of disk file systems include FAT (FAT12,
FAT16, FAT32, exFAT), NTFS, HFS and HFS+, HPFS, UFS, ext2, ext3, ext4, btrfs, ISO
9660, ODS-5, Veritas File System, ZFS, ReiserFS, Linux SWAP and UDF. Some disk
file systems are journaling file systems or versioning file systems.
ISO 9660 and Universal Disk Format are the two most common formats that
target Compact Discs and DVDs. Mount Rainier is a newer extension to UDF
supported by Linux 2.6 series and Windows Vista that facilitates rewriting to DVDs
in the same fashion as has been possible with floppy disks.

Flash file systems

A flash file system is a file system designed for storing files on flash
memory devices. These are becoming more prevalent as the number of mobile
devices is increasing, and the capacity of flash memories increase.

While a disk file system can be used on a flash device, this is suboptimal for
several reasons:

 Erasing blocks: Flash memory blocks have to be explicitly erased before

they can be rewritten. The time taken to erase blocks can be significant, thus
it is beneficial to erase unused blocks while the device is idle.
 Random access: Disk file systems are optimized to avoid disk
seeks whenever possible, due to the high cost of seeking. Flash memory
devices impose no seek latency.
  Wear levelling: Flash memory devices tend to wear out when a single block
is repeatedly overwritten; flash file systems are designed to spread out
writes evenly.
Log-structured file systems have many of the desirable properties for a flash file
system. Such file systems include JFFS2 and YAFFS.

File systems under Microsoft Windows

Directory listing in a Windows command shell

Windows makes use of the FAT and NTFS file systems.
(NTFS) is a Disk File System.

The file system (NTFS), which is also sometimes called the New Technology File
System, is a process that the Windows NT operating system uses for storing,
organizing, and finding files on a hard disk efficiently.

NTFS was first introduced in 1993, as a part of the Windows NT 3.1 release.

The benefits of NTFS are that, compared to other similar file systems like File
Allocation Table (FAT) and High-Performance File System (HPFS), NTFS focuses on:
Performance: NTFS allows file compression so your organization can enjoy
increased storage space on a disk.

Security access control: NTFS will enable you to place permissions on files and
folders so you can restrict access to mission-critical data.

Reliability: NTFS focuses on the consistency of the file system so that in the event
of a disaster (such as a power loss or system failure), you can quickly restore your
data.

Disk space utilization: In addition to file compression, NTFS also allows disk
quotas. This feature enables businesses to have even more control over storage
space.

File system journaling: This means that you can easily keep a log of—and audit—
the files added, modified, or deleted on a drive. This log is called the Master File
Table (MFT).

How Does NTFS Work

The technical breakdown of NTFS is as follow

A hard disk is formatted

A file gets divided into partitions within the hard disk

Within each partition, the operating system tracks every file stored in a specific
operating system

Each file is distributed and stored in one or more clusters or disk spaces of a
predefined uniform size (on the hard disk)

The size of each cluster will range from 512 bytes to 64 kilobytes
You can control the size of a cluster size based on what’s most important to your
organization:

Efficient use of disk space

The number of disk accesses required to access a file

Drawbacks of NTFS

The primary disadvantage of NTFS is that its modern capabilities aren’t accessible
to older technology. And, because NTFS is designed to work with a Windows
operating system, devices that operated from Mac or Android aren’t always
compatible. For example:

Mac OS computers can read NTFS formatted drives, but they can only get written
to NTFS with the help of third-party software

Media devices like DVD players, TVs, and digital cameras are likely too old to
leverage NTFS storage devices

Additionally, NTFS does not include a system for guaranteeing performance and
bandwidth to the file system, which can pose a problem to some users.

Who Uses NTFS?

Today, NTFS is used most often with the following Microsoft operating systems:

Windows 10

Windows 8

Windows 7

Windows Vista
Windows XP

Windows 2000

Windows NT

However, it is possible to leverage NTFS with other operating systems like Linux
and BSD.

File Restore with NTFS Permissions

NTFS permissions provide access control for files and folders, containers and
objects on shared systems, typically network attached storage (NAS). There are
five basic NTFS permissions:

Read: Allows the user or group to read the file and view its attributes, ownership,
and permissions set.

Write: Allows the user or group to overwrite the file, change its attributes, view its
ownership, and view the permissions set.

Read & Execute: Allows the user or group to run and execute the application, and
perform all actions allowed by the Read permission.

Modify: Allows the user or group to modify and delete a file, and perform all of
the actions permitted by the Read, Write, and Read and Execute permissions.

Full Control: Allows the user or group to change the permission set on a file, take
ownership of the file, and perform actions permitted by all other permissions