File System

What Does a File System Do?

• Responsible for creating, manipulating, renaming,
copying, and removing files to and from a storage
device
• Organizes files into common storage units called
directories
• Keeps track of where files and directories are
located
• Assists users by relating files and folders to the
physical structure of the storage medium

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Figure 10-1: Files and directories in a file
system are similar to documents and
folders in a filing cabinet

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 Storage Mediums
• A hard disk, or drive, is the most common storage
medium for a file system
– Physically organized into tracks and sectors
– Read/write heads move over specified areas of the
hard disks to store (write) or retrieve (read) data
– Random access device
• Can read or write data directly anywhere on the disk
• Faster than sequential access, which reads and writes
from beginning to end
• Makes use of the file system to organize files
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 File Systems and Operating
Systems
• The type of file management system is dependent
on the operating system
– FAT (file allocation table)
• Used from MS-DOS to Windows ME
– NTFS (New Technology File System)
• Default for Windows NT through Windows 2003
– Unix and Linux support several file systems

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 FAT
• Groups hard drive sectors into clusters
– Increases performance by organizing blocks of
sectors contiguously
• Maintains the relationship between files and clusters
being used for the file
– Clusters have two entries in the table
• Current cluster information
• Link to the next cluster or a special code indicating it
is the last cluster
• Keeps track of writable clusters and bad clusters
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 FAT (continued)
• Organizes the hard drive into
– Partition boot record
• Contains information on how to access the volume
with a file system
– Main and backup FAT
• If an error occurs in reading the main FAT, the backup
is copied to the main to ensure stability
– Root directory
• Contains entries for every file and folder in the
directory

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 Defragmentation
• Occurs when files have clusters scattered in different
locations on the storage medium rather than in a
contiguous location
• Windows provides the Disk Defragmenter utility to
reorganize clusters contiguously
– Improves performance by minimizing movement of
the read/write heads
– Should be used regularly to ensure system runs at
peak performance

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 Figure 10-6
Files become fragmented as they are stored in noncontiguous
clusters; a defragmenting utility moves files to contiguous clusters
and improves disk performance

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 Advantages of FAT
• Efficient use of disk space
– Does not have to use contiguous space for large files
• File names (FAT32) can have up to 255 characters
• Easy to undelete files that have been deleted
– When a file is deleted, the system places a hex value
of E5h in the first position of the file name
– File remains on drive and can be undeleted by
providing the original letter in the undelete process

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 Disadvantages of FAT
• Overall performance slows down as more files are
stored on the partition
• Hard drive can quite easily become fragmented
• Lack of security
– NTFS provides access rights to files and directories
• File integrity problems
– Lost clusters
– Invalid files and directories
– Allocation errors

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 NTFS
• Overcomes limitations of the FAT system
• Is a “journaling” file system
– Keeps track of transaction performed and “rolls
back” transactions if errors are found
• Uses a master file table (MFT) to store data about
every file and directory on the volume
– Similar to a database table with records for each file
and directory
• Uses clusters and reserves blocks of space to allow
the MFT to grow
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 Advantages of NTFS
• File access is very fast and reliable
• With the MFT, the system can recover from
problems without losing significant amounts of data
• Security is greatly increased over FAT
• File encryption with EFS (Encrypting File System)
and file attributes
• File compression
– Process of reducing file size to save disk space

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 Disadvantages of NTFS

• Large overhead
– Not recommended for volumes less than 4 GB

• Cannot access NTFS volumes from MS-DOS,

Windows 5, or Windows 98

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 Comparing File Systems
• Choosing the correct file system is operating system
dependent
• NTFS is recommended for Windows systems
– Today’s networked environments need security
– Today’s machines use tools that require large volumes
– If the hard drive is 10 GB or less, FAT is more
efficient in handling smaller volumes of data
• UNIX/Linux have many file system choices

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 File Organization
• Binary or text
– Binary files are computer readable but not human
readable (i.e., executable programs, image files)
• Faster to access than text files
– Text files consist of ASCII or Unicode characters
• Easy to view and modify with application programs
• Sequential or random access
– Sequential data is accessed one chunk after the other
in order
– Random access data can be accessed in any order
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 Figure 10-7
Sequential vs. random access

Connecting with Computer Science 17

 Sequential Access
• Starts at the beginning of the file and processes to
the end of the file
– Writing process is very fast because new data is
added to the end of a file
– Inserting, deleting, or modifying data can be very
slow
• Can store data in rows like a database record
– Rows can have field delimiters or specify fixed sizes
for each field

Connecting with Computer Science 18

 Figure 10-8
A comma can be used as a row delimiter

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 Figure 10-9
Data can also have a fixed size

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