Filesystems

A hard disk is one form of data storage device, and generally your data is written to sectors (also called blocks) in 512-byte sections. A file system keeps track of which sectors are used and which sectors aren’t. It also holds a table that indicates which files are in which sectors. Operating systems come with built-in file systems to organize data. Windows specifically supports the latest flavors of these two file systems:

1. File Allocation Table (FAT)—FAT was named after its design. A table keeps track of which area of your storage media is available for use, and which portions have data already written to them. This table makes it easier to find where portions of your data that make up a file are located. FAT has developed over the years to allow for longer filenames and larger hard disks. FAT32 is the latest version of this disk file system.
2. New Technology File System (NTFS)—It was first introduced in Windows NT and has also undergone advances over the years. NTFS allows for permissions to be placed on specific folders or files, quotas, compression, mount points, and metadata. We discuss NTFS a little later, but this has been and continues to be in Vista the disk file system of choice.