Disk and File Systems

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Operating systems have a variety of native file systems. Linux has a greater range of native file systems, those being: ext2, ext3, ReiserFS, Reiser4, GFS, GFS2, OCFS, OCFS2, NILFS and Google File System. Linux also has full support for XFS and JFS, along with the FAT file systems, and NTFS. Windows, on the other hand, has limited file system support which only includes: FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS. The NTFS file system is the most efficient and reliable of the four Windows systems. All the FAT systems are older than NTFS and have limitations on the partition and file size that can cause a variety of problems. For most of the above file systems, there are two ways it can be allocated. Each system can be journaled or non-journaled, journaled being the safer alternative under the circumstances of a system crash. If a system comes to an abrupt stop in a system crash scenario, the non-journaled system will need to undergo an examination from the system check utilities, whereas the journaled file systems recovery is automatic. Microsoft's NTFS is journaled along with most Linux file systems, except ext2, but including ext3, reiserfs and JFS. Most modern file systems are made up of similar directories and subdirectories. Along with the operating systems file system similarities, there are subtle differences. Microsoft separates its directories with a backslash and its file names are case insensitive whereas Unix-derived operating systems (including Linux) use the forward slash and their file names generally are case sensitive.