Overviewing different types of file systems_Microsoft Exam MD：100 Windows 10 Certification Guide-QQ阅读男生科幻网

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Overviewing different types of file systems

Before you can store data on a volume, you must format it. To format a volume, you must select the file system that the volume should use. Windows 10 supports different file systems, including file allocation table (FAT), FAT32, and extended file allocation table (exFAT); the NTFS file system and the Resilient File System (ReFS).

There is also the Compact Disc File System (CDFS) and the Universal Disk Format (UDF), which are used on optical and read-only media. These two file types are out of the scope of this exam guide.

In this section, you will learn about the differences and benefits of the file systems that Windows 10 supports. Let's learn about all these file systems in detail.

FAT

FAT is the oldest file system that Windows 10 supports. It has a low overhead but many limitations compared to newer file systems. However, enterprises often use it because nearly every operating system supports it. For example, you would use FAT on removable media, such as a USB drive, when you need to transfer data between Windows 10 and a non-Microsoft operating system or on a local hard drive if you have a PC with dual-boot configuration.

Windows 10 supports three versions of FAT, which are FAT, FAT32, and exFAT. The main differences between these three versions are as follows:

The size of the largest supported volume
The default cluster size
The maximum number of files and folders that you can create on the volume

The following table lists the differences between the three FAT versions:

Table 5.1 - Difference between FAT versions

Important Note

A cluster is the smallest unit of disk space that you can allocate to store a file. For example, if a volume cluster is 4 kilobytes (KB) and you store a file that's 100 bytes in size on that volume, it will use one cluster, which is 4 KB.The exFAT file system supports clusters that ranges from 512 bytes to 32 megabytes (MB).

When you must choose between the FAT or NTFS file system to format a volume, you will have to compare the file systems. You will find that many NTFS features are not available with FAT, such as the following:

Security: You cannot configure file permissions and limit user actions on a FAT volume.
Auditing: You cannot audit user actions on the FAT file system.
Compression: The FAT file system does not support compression and each file uses its full original size, rounded to the closest cluster size.
Encryption: Encrypting File System (EFS) is not supported, and you cannot use it on exFAT volumes.
Disk quota: The FAT file system does not support quotas. This means that you cannot limit the disk space that users can use on a FAT volume.

After you have formatted a volume, you cannot change the file system or cluster size. You can only perform a backup and reformat the volume. The only exception is that you can convert FAT or FAT32 file system volumes into NTFS file system format.

Now, let's learn about the NTFS system.

NTFS

This type of file system is the default file system in Windows 10. The NTFS provides better performance, reliability, and advanced features that are not available in any version of FAT.

The NTFS file system provides the following:

Reliability: The NTFS file system uses log file and checkpoint information to restore the consistency of the file system when the computer restarts. In the event of a bad sector error, the NTFS file system dynamically remaps the cluster that contains the bad sector, and it allocates a new cluster for the data. The NTFS file system also marks that cluster as bad and does not use it again.
Security: You can set permissions on a file, folder, or the entire NTFS volume, which enables you to control which users, groups, or computers can read, modify, or delete data. You also can enable auditing to log activities on the NTFS volume
Data confidentially: The NTFS file system supports the EFS in order to protect file content. If you have EFS enabled, you can encrypt files and folders for one user. Only this user can access these encrypted files. Other users can't access these files.
Limit storage growth: The NTFS file system supports the use of disk quotas. With this feature, you enable the amount of disk space that is available to a user. When disk quotas are enabled, you can configure whether to allow users to exceed their limits.
Additional space: The NTFS file system allows you to create extra disk space by compressing files, folders, or whole drives. You also can extend an NTFS volume by mounting an additional volume to an empty folder.
Support for large volumes: You can format a volume up to 256 terabytes (TB) in size by using the NTFS file system with a 64 KB cluster size. The NTFS file system supports larger files and supports a larger number of files per volume compared to any FAT version. The NTFS file system also manages disk space efficiently by using smaller cluster sizes. For example, a 30 GB NTFS volume uses 4 KB clusters. The same volume formatted with FAT32 uses 16 KB clusters. Using smaller clusters reduces space wastage on hard disks.
Advanced features: The NTFS file system includes multiple advanced features, such as distributed link tracking, sparse files, and multiple data streams.

In Windows 10, there is a utility called Convert.exe that you can use to convert FAT or FAT32 file systems into the NTFS file system type on data volumes. The benefit of using this utility is that you will not have downtime or data loss.

We will not go too deep into Convert.exe as it is beyond the scope of this book, but in the following example, you will see that the convert command is used to convert the volume on drive F into ntfs with messages during the conversion process:

convert F: /fs:ntfs /v

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, you cannot convert NTFS into FAT. First, you must backup your data, reformat the volume by using the NTFS file system, and then restore the data.

Next, we will look at the ReFS system.

ReFS

Resilient File System (ReFS) was introduced in Windows Server 2012. It is also available in Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, and in all newer Microsoft operating systems, including Windows 10. ReFS is built on top of the NTFS file system and is designed to provide the highest level of resiliency, integrity, and scalability, regardless of software or hardware failures.

ReFS includes only some of the NTFS features, such as security and auditing, but does not support others, such as quota, compression, and EFS. ReFS is especially useful for data volumes in multi-terabyte (TB) file servers and for cluster-shared volumes in failover clusters.

The ReFS file system has the following benefits:

ReFS is designed to provide the highest level of protection for data from common errors that can cause corruption, such as unexpected loss of power or disk failure.
The ReFS system periodically scans volumes. If it detects corruption within volumes, ReFS tries to correct the corruption automatically. If it cannot repair the corruption automatically, ReFS localizes the salvaging process to the corruption area.
ReFS supports extremely large volumes, even larger than the NTFS file system, without impacting performance. ReFS volumes can contain petabytes of data with ease.

Windows 10 provides limited support for ReFS. You can use it only with two-way or three-way storage spaces. You cannot format ReFS for non-mirrored storage spaces, such as simple or parity storage spaces.

In this section, you learned about the three most common file systems for Windows 10. In the next section, we will look at how you can configure and manage file access and NTFS permissions.