List of File Systems - Disk File Systems

Disk File Systems

Disk file systems are usually block-oriented. Files in a block-oriented file system are sequences of blocks, often featuring fully random-access read, write, and modify operations.

• ADFS – Acorn's Advanced Disc filing system, successor to DFS.
• AdvFS - Advanced File System, designed by Digital Equipment Corporation for their Digital UNIX (now Tru64 UNIX) operating system.
• AFS (Not to be confused with Andrew File System, below) – Acer Fast Filesystem, used on SCO OpenServer
• AFS - Ami File Safe, a commercial filesystem shipped on Amiga in the 1990s (AFS is structure compatible with PFS)
• AthFS - AtheOS File System, a 64-bit journaled filesystem now used by Syllable. Also called AFS
• BFS – the Be File System used on BeOS, occasionally misnamed as BeFS. Open source implementation called OpenBFS is used by the Haiku operating system.
• Btrfs - is a copy-on-write file system for Linux announced by Oracle in 2007 and published under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
• CBMFS – The filesystem used on most Commodore 64-compatible floppy drives including the venerable 1541.
• CMDFS – A filesystem extension added to CBMFS by Creative Micro Designs, for use in their 3.5 inch floppy drives, RAM disks, and hard drive controllers.
• CP/M file system — Native filesystem used in the CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) operating system which was first released in the late 1970s.
• DDFS – Data Domain File System, the data deduplication file system that ships in the Data Domain Deduplication Storage Systems which are an alternative to tape for storing backups and archives.
• DTFS – Desktop File System, featuring file compression, used by SCO OpenServer
• DOS 3.x - Original floppy operating system and file system developed for the Apple II
• EAFS – Extended Acer Fast Filesystem, used on SCO OpenServer
• Extent File System (EFS) – an older block filing system under IRIX.
• ext – Extended file system, designed for Linux systems
• ext2 – Second extended file system, designed for Linux systems.
• ext3 – A journaled form of ext2.
• ext4 – A follow up for ext3 and also a journaled filesystem with support for extents.
• ext3cow – A versioning file system form of ext3.
• FAT – File Allocation Table, used on DOS and Microsoft Windows; FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 for 12-, 16- and 32-bit table depths.
  • VFAT – Optional layer on Microsoft Windows FAT system to allow long (up to 255 character) filenames instead of only the 8.3 filenames allowed in the plain FAT filesystem.
  • FATX – A modified version of Microsoft Windows FAT system that is used on the original Xbox console.
• FFS (Amiga) – Fast File System, used on Amiga systems. This FS has evolved over time. Now counts FFS1, FFS Intl, FFS DCache, FFS2.
• FFS – Fast File System, used on *BSD systems
• Fossil – Plan 9 from Bell Labs snapshot archival file system.
• Files-11 – OpenVMS file system; also used on some PDP-11 systems; supports record-oriented files
• HFS – Hierarchical File System, in use until HFS+ was introduced on Mac OS 8.1. Also known as Mac OS Standard format. Successor to Macintosh File System (MFS) & predecessor to HFS+; not to be confused with IBM's HFS provided with z/OS
• HFS+ – Updated version of Apple’s HFS, Hierarchical File System, supported on Mac OS 8.1 & above, including Mac OS X. Supports file system journaling, enabling recovery of data after a system crash. Also referred to as 'Mac OS Extended format or HFS Plus
• HPFS – High Performance File System, used on OS/2
• HTFS – High Throughput Filesystem, used on SCO OpenServer
• ISO 9660 – Used on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM discs (Rock Ridge and Joliet are extensions to this)
• JFS – IBM Journaling file system, provided in Linux, OS/2, and AIX. Supports extents.
• JXFS used in AmigaOS 4.1.
• LisaFS - Filesystem used by Apple Lisa's operating system. Unique in that it allowed two different files with exactly same name ("foo" and "foo").
• LFS – 4.4BSD implementation of a log-structured file system
• MFS – Macintosh File System, used on early Mac OS systems. Succeeded by Hierarchical File System (HFS).
• Next3 – A form of ext3 with snapshots support.
• MFS – TiVo's Media File System, a proprietary fault tolerant format used on Tivo hard drives for real time recording from live TV.
• Minix file system – Used on Minix systems
• NILFS – Linux implementation of a log-structured file system
• NTFS – (New Technology File System) Used on Microsoft's Windows NT-based operating systems
• NetWare File System - The original NetWare 2.x - 5.x file system, used optionally by later versions.
• NSS – Novell Storage Services. This is a new 64-bit journaling file system using a balanced tree algorithm. Used in NetWare versions 5.0-up and recently ported to Linux.
• OneFS - One File System. This is a fully journaled, distributed file system used by Isilon. OneFS uses FlexProtect and Reed-Solomon encodings to support up to four simultaneous disk failures.
• OFS – Old File System, on Amiga. Good for floppies, but fairly useless on hard drives.
• PFS – and PFS2, PFS3, etc. Technically interesting file system available for the Amiga, performs very well under a lot of circumstances. Very simple and elegant.
• ProDOS - Operating system and file system successor to DOS 3.x, for use on Apple’s computers prior to the Macintosh & Lisa computers, the Apple series, including the IIgs
• Qnx4fs - File system that is used in QNX version 4 and 6.
• Qnx6fs - New copy-on-write file system presented in QNX 6.4.0 and used as default since 6.4.1.
• ReFS (Resilient File System) - New file system by Microsoft that is built on the foundations of NTFS (but cannot boot, has a default custer size of 64 KB and does not support compression) and is intended to be used with the soon to be released Windows Server 8 operating system.
• ReiserFS – File system that uses journaling
• Reiser4 – File system that uses journaling, newest version of ReiserFS
• Reliance – Datalight's transactional file system for high reliability applications
• Reliance Nitro – Tree-based transactional file system developed for high-performance embedded systems, from Datalight
• S51K – AT&T UNIX System V 1KB Filesystem, used by SCO UNIX and SCO OpenServer
• SkyFS - Developed for SkyOS to replace BFS as the operating system's main file system. It is based on BFS, but contains many new features.
• SFS – Smart File System, journaling file system available for the Amiga platforms.
• SpadFS - Linux - non-journaling, hashing lookup
• STL (standard language file system) - a file system developed by IBM.
• TRFS - Experimental, design only
• Tux3 - An experimental versioning file system intended as a replacement for ext3
• UDF – Packet based file system for WORM/RW media such as CD-RW and DVD, now supports hard drives and flash memory as well.
• UFS – Unix File System, used on Solaris and older BSD systems
• UFS2 – Unix File System, used on newer BSD systems
• VxFS Veritas file system, first commercial journaling file system; HP-UX, Solaris, Linux, AIX
• VLIR (Variable Length Indexed Record) – a filesystem extension added by Berkeley Softworks to CBMFS, allowing full random access read and write operations, for computers running GEOS.
• WAFL – Write Anywhere File Layout. High performance, log-structured like file system. WAFL uses RAID-DP to protect against multiple disk failures, and NVRAM for transaction log replays. Used on NetApp systems
• XFS – Used on SGI IRIX and Linux systems
• ZFS - Sun Microsystems ZFS open source specification ported to IBM zSeries systems.