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Operating Systems

CS-384

File Systems

NTFS and FAT32

Submitted To: Dr. Chris Taylor

Submitted By: Aditya Sitani

Date: 02/3/2003

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Table of Contents

Introduction..................................................................................................... 0

Physical Disk................................................................................................... 1

Files .................................................................................................................2

Files concept.................................................................................................................... 2

File Attributes.................................................................................................................. 2

File Operation.................................................................................................................. 4

FAT32 ............................................................................................................. 5

Origin Of FAT32............................................................................................................. 5

Disk Structure..................................................................................................................6

FAT Naming convention................................................................................................. 7

Advantages of FAT32 ..................................................................................................... 8

Disadvantages of FAT32................................................................................................. 9

NTFS File System ........................................................................................... 9

NTFS Disk Structure..................................................................................................... 11

Partition Boot Sector ..................................................................................................... 11

Master File Table (MFT)............................................................................................... 12

Metadata........................................................................................................................15

Features of NTFS .......................................................................................................... 16

NTFS multiple data streams...................................................................................... 16

NTFS Compressed Files ........................................................................................... 16

NTFS Security and Encryption ................................................................................. 17

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NTFS Sparse File ...................................................................................................... 17

Hard Links................................................................................................................. 18

FAT32 vs. NTFS........................................................................................... 18

Conclusion..................................................................................................... 19

References ..................................................................................................... 21

Tables and Figures

Figures:

Fig: 1 Hard Disk Structure ..............................................................................2

Fig: 2 The FAT file Structure ......................................................................... 7

Fig: 3 Layout of an NTFS volume ................................................................11

Fig: 4 Master file table ..................................................................................13

Fig 5: Sparse File .......................................................................................... 18

Tables:

Table 1: NTFS File Attributes ...................................................................... 15

Table 2: Meta Data Table..............................................................................16

Table 3: Comparison between FAT32 and NTFS ........................................19

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Introduction

The world is revolving around computers and almost all the work in todays

world is dependent on computers. An operating system is a program that acts as an

intermediary between a computer user and the computer hardware. Just imagine how

crazy a user would go if the computer would not be able to store data permanently, and

all the data would get erased as soon as the system was rebooted or there was a power

failure. Permanent data is stored on secondary storage devices like fixed disks, floppy

disks, magnetic tapes and other types of storage devices. The file system management

resides permanently on a secondary device. In an operating system, the file system

manages the information that resides on the secondary storage device. A file system is the

organization method of data on a hard disk volume. It consists of two distinct parts:

collection of files, each storing related data, and a directory structure, which organizes

and provides information about all the files in the system. Some file systems have a third

part, partitions, which are used to separate physically or logically large collection of

directories. The two most popular file systems used today are FAT32 (File Allocation

Table ) and NTFS ( New Technology File System). Both the file systems have their own

advantages and disadvantages. This report will discuss about these two different file

systems and their working. To understand the concept of file systems, one should have a

basic idea about physical disks.

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Physical Disk

A hard disk uses round, flat disks called platters, coated on both sides with a

special media material designed to store information in the form of magnetic patterns.

These platters are mounted by cutting a hole in the center and stacking them onto a

spindle. The platters rotate at a high speed, driven by a special spindle motor connected

to the spindle. Special electromagnetic read/write devices called heads are mounted onto

the platters and used to either record information onto the disk or read information from

it. The sliders are mounted onto arms, all of which are mechanically connected into a

single assembly and positioned over the surface of the disk by a device called actuators.

A logic board controls the activity of the other components and communicates with the

rest of the PC. A disk structure diagram is shown in figure 1.

Each surface of each platter on the disk can hold tens of billions of individual bits of data.

Each platter has two heads, one on the top of the platter and one on the bottom, so a hard

disk with three platters (normally) has six surfaces and six total heads. Each platter has its

information recorded in concentric circles called tracks. Each track is further broken

down into smaller pieces called sectors, each of which holds 512 bytes of information.

Sectors (or blocks) are often grouped together to form a larger unit of storage called a

cluster. Each of the file system uses different cluster size depending on the size of the

partition.

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Fig: 1 Hard Disk Structure

Files

Files concept

The data is stored permanently in different storage media, such as magnetic tapes and

optical disks. The operating system provides a uniform logical view of information

storage. The operating system abstracts from the physical properties of its storage device

to define a logical unit (file). Files are mapped by the operating system onto a physical

device. The operating system attaches attributes to the file in order to keep track of and

manage it.

File Attributes

The following are the most common file attributes:

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Name: In order for us to use files and distinguish between them, files are given human

readable names (an alpha numeric string), e.g. aditya.doc. Some systems such as UNIX

use case sensitive names.

Identifier: This value allows the file to be kept track of within the file system. This field

generally consists of an unseen numerical value, which the operating system assigns.

Type: This information is needed for those systems that support different file types. The

type is decided on the basis of the extension of the file. It is responsible for associating

the file with the right application, necessary for systems supporting multiple file types

(e.g. .txt for text file, supported by a lot of text editors).

Location: This represents a pointer to the location on the device where the file is located.

Size: This information is to keep track of the current size of the file in bytes, words or

blocks.

Protection: This attribute is associated with ownership, and privileges, in other words

which user or user groups can read, write or execute the file.

Time and Date: This information keeps track of creation, last modification and last use.

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