Windows NT File Systems

File Allocation Table (FAT): FAT is a simple file system withlimited reliability and performance capabilities. NT's FAT file system is a longfilename (LFN)-capable version of the one in DOS. FAT volumes in NT can be up to4GB; DOS can address only up to 2GB. FAT is required for volumes that mustaccess DOS and NT in dual-boot configurations.

NT File System (NTFS): NTFS is a highly reliable, secure, and tunedfile system capable of supporting volumes up to 16 exabytes (EB). Filenames onNTFS volumes are Unicode-compliant long filenames stored with 8.3 FAT-typefilenames for backward compatibility with DOS machines accessing networked NTFSvolumes. NTFS also supports fault-tolerance features such as transaction-basedrecovery and hot-fixing bad disk sectors. NTFS is far less prone to filefragmentation than FAT. NTFS's superior reliability and security features makeit ideal for server drives or large volumes (more than 400MB).

High-Performance File System (HPFS): HPFS first appeared with OS/21.2. HPFS provides superior capabilities to FAT, including support for longfilenames and volumes of up to 2048GB. HPFS uses physical sectors rather thanclusters as allocation units. Physical sectors increase storage efficiency andreduce file fragmentation compared to FAT. The OS/2 version of HPFS supportshot-fixing bad sectors, but the NT version does not. Unlike NTFS, HPFS doesn'tsupport security or transaction-based disk recovery. NT 4.0 does not supportHPFS.

CD-ROM File System (CDFS): CDFS is a read-only file system forCD-ROMs. Macintosh and PC-compatible systems use two different CDFS formats thatare incompatible (however, NT Server lets you share a PC CDFS volume with Macclients).