Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
well what is it?
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NTFS allow file sizes past 4gb, while FAT32 can't.
The only 'advantages' that I know of is that FAT32 is a little faster then NTFS, thats why alot of gamers leave it at the default. Saying that, I don't know any truth to it
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Don't think it's New Technology. It just means it was originally intended for Windows NT (Upon which Windows XP is based)
Then again, don't know what NT stands for there, so it might be New Technology after all...
In any case, it's... a file system. Now, I don't know how much you know already, so you'd better get the full story.
A harddisk in itself just provides a big amount of "flat" storage. The computer can ask it what's written on any sector of the disk just by computing the appropriate address, and sending a command to the harddisk.
That's just not very useful since we prefer to deal with harddisks in terms of files. (It's a lot more useful to know what's stored inside, say, c:\boot.ini, than knowing what's in sector 34,552,226 on the drive)
That's what a filesystem is for. It just stores some big chunks of data on predefined positions on the disk, and then applies a known structure to the rest of the disk. (Conceptually, you can imagine that the very first sector contains a bit of information about which filesystem is used. Once the computer has read that, it knows how to interpret the rest of the drive. Then you might have, say, the next 200 MB dedicated to an index of all files on the disk, along with the addresses at which they're stored. So when I want to open c:\boot.ini, the disk driver reads through the index (which it knows where to find), scans for the filename "boot.ini", and retrieves the address of the data. Then it can retrieve the data stored at that address, and return it to the program that requested it.
So far so good, that's what a filesystem is. Basically a bunch of data stored on the HD which defines the structure of the rest of the disk. Where are files allowed to be placed, where does it say which file is where, or how big it is, how are directories represented, and so on.
Historically, Windows used the FAT filesystem (first FAT12, then FAT16 and finally FAT32), which, frankly, sucked.
As you might have guessed from the above, it's really important that the structure imposed on the HD is actually followed at all times. If you lose just a small bit of the index, you might be completely unable to locate files at all. You might also have guessed that filesystems can become awfully slow. (First we need to look up the address of the file, then we need to read from that address. And if the file is fragmented, we need to read where *each* fragment is located, and then actually read the fragments)
Moreover, the filesystem doesn't work on single bytes, but bundles them together into larger blocks. The downside of this is that if you make a file containing 1 byte, it actually takes up much more space on the disk. The advantage is that 1) the index becomes a lot smaller (Because there are a lot of bytes on a HD, so if it was possible to address individual bytes, each address would be longer, take up more space, and since the index is basically a long listing of addresses, that too would explode. Bigger index would mean less disk space actually available for use, and more time spent when looking for a file)
NTFS typically uses a cluster size of 4KB. That is, no matter how small your file is, it always eats up a multiple of 4KB. a 1byte file uses 4KB on disk, and a 5KB file uses 8KB on disk.
So, what all this amounts to is that there are a lot of requirements for a good filesystem:
- It must be robust and easy to error-check. (Sometimes computers crash. Sometimes they crash while writing to the HD. In those cases, we need to be able to easily check afterwards whether the file system is damaged, and if it is, we must be able to repair it. Preferably, we'd like to be able to repair it quickly too, but as long as it's repairable, that's the main thing.
- It must strike a good balance between small and big cluster sizes. Too small, and we waste performance and disk space on the index. Too big, and the files themselves bloat unacceptably
- It should minimize defragmentation
Furthermore, features such as security are quite fashionable in some circles. Unix has had this capability for ages, but the FAT filesystem didn't support it. You couldn't define on a filesystem level which files each user own or has certain rights to. You couldn't for example say that non-admin users should be prevented from opening c:\windows, or writing to boot.ini.
NTFS is Microsoft's attempt at solving all this.
- It uses logging to ensure robustness. (Every operation on the filesystem is logged internally, so that if the system crashes, we can read the log afterwards, test if the operation completed or not, and then either roll it back entirely (no one wants a half-written file), or finish it properly. Or if the filesystem itself is damaged, the log can be used to see exactly what was changed so the damage can be easily undone. FAT had to actually scan the entire disk just to verify that everything is ok. That's why chkdsk/scandisk takes hours on Win98 (where NTFS isn't supported), but usually around 10 seconds on Windows XP with a NTFS disk. And it allows recovery from errors that would have destroyed data on FAT disks. (Remember those chk001.tmp files or whatever they were called that scandisk created in C:\? That was because it found lost data, but didn't know which file it came from, making it pretty much useless. NTFS always knows where data comes from, because it says so in the log)
- It uses a much more flexible index structure that allows reasonably small cluster sizes (4KB is standard, while on bigger disks, FAT32 was forced to use something like 32KB clusters) without wasting too much space or performance.
And it adds security features en masse. You can define access rights for files on a per-user (or user-group) basis to allow/prevent reading, writing or executing of files
whats NTFS File System?
Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Edson, Sep 19, 2006.
