FS-Comparision

8/8/2019 FS-Comparision

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File System Functionality Comparison

The following tables list functionality and feature support comparisons for the four main Windows file systems,

NTFS, exFAT, UDF, and FAT32:

Functionality

Feature NTFS exFAT UDF FAT32

Creation time stamps Yes Yes Yes Yes

Last access time stamps No (see note below) Yes Yes Yes (date only)

Last change time stamps Yes Yes Yes Yes

Last archive time stamps No No No No

Case-sensitive Yes (option) No Yes No

Case-preserving Yes Yes Yes Yes

Hard links Yes No Yes No

Soft links Yes No No No

Sparse files Yes No Yes No

Named streams Yes No Yes No

Oplocks Yes Yes Yes Yes

Extended attributes Yes No Yes (on-disk only) No

Alternate data streams Yes No Yes No

Mount points Yes No No No

Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000: The NTFS last access time stamp field is updated.

Limits


Maximum

file name

length

255 Unicode

characters

255 Unicode

characters

127 Unicode or 254

ASCII characters

255 Unicode

characters


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Maximum

path name

length

32,760 Unicode

characters with each

path component no

more than 255

characters

32,760 Unicode


path component no

more than 255

characters

32,760 Unicode


path component no

more than 255

characters

32,760 Unicode


path component no

more than 255

characters

Maximum

file size

2^641 bytes 2^641 bytes 2^641 bytes 4 GiB

Maximum

volume size

16 TB (4 KB Cluster

Size) or 256TB (64 KB

Cluster Size)

2^321 clusters

(Maximum cluster size

= 2^25 1)

2^32 blocks 2^32 blocks

Journaling and Change Log


Metadata-only journaling Yes No No No

File change log Yes No No No

Block Allocation Features


Tail packing Yes (small files are made resident in the MFT stream descriptor) No No No

Extents Yes No Yes No

Variable block size No (set by the volume) No No No

Security


Track file owner Yes No No No

POSIX file permissions No (available in POSIX subsystem feature) No Yes No


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FS-Comparision

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