Originally introduced in 1985 for floppy and hard disks, HFS replaced the original Macintosh file system.

Without a file system, stored information wouldnt be isolated into individual files and would be difficult to identify and retrieve.

As data capacities increase, the organization and accessibility of individual files are becoming even more important in data storage.

Plus, discover how quad-level cell (QLC) and triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory are coexisting in the data center.

Major types of file systems include distributed file systems, disk-based file systems and special purpose file systems.

Metadata can also identify free blocks of available storage on the drive and how much space is available.

A file is placed in a directory -- or a folder in Windows OS -- or subdirectory at the desired place in the tree structure.

PC and mobile OSes have file systems in which files are placed somewhere in a hierarchical tree structure.

A partition is a region of the hard disk or other storage that the OS manages separately.

One file system is contained in the primary partition, and some OSes allow for multiple partitions on one disk.

In this situation, if one file system gets corrupted, the data in a different partition will be safe.

Some metadata may be kept in the directory, whereas other metadata may be kept in a structure called an inode.

The inode indexes information by number, which can be used to access the location of the file and then the file itself.

Along with controlling who can modify or read files, restricting access can ensure that data modification is controlled and limited.

These types of mechanisms are useful to prevent access by regular users, but not as effective against outside intruders.

An encryption key can be applied to unencrypted text to encrypt it, or the key can be used to decrypt encrypted text.

With encryption, the file system does not need to know the encryption key to manage the data effectively.

The type of file system can differ by OS and the needs of that OS.

File System Best Suited For Windows As Well As Mac OS X And

The three most common PC operating systems are Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

FAT was designed in 1977 for floppy disks, but was later adapted for hard disks.

While efficient and compatible with most current OSes, FAT cannot match the performance and scalability of more modern file systems.

GFS offers direct access to shared block storage and can be used as a local file system.

Under the terms of the GNU General Public License, both the GFS and GFS2 file systems are available as free software.