The following lists identify, characterize, and link to more thorough information on Computer file systems. Many older operating systems support only their one "native" file system, which does not bear any name apart from the name of the operating system itself.

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 The acorn, or oaknut, is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera ''Quercus'' and '' Lithocarpus'', in the family Fagaceae). It usually contains one seed (occasionally two seeds), enclosed in a tough, leathery shell, and borne ...

's Advanced Disc filing system, successor to DFS. *

AdvFS AdvFS, also known as Tru64 UNIX Advanced File System, is a file system developed in the late 1980s to mid-1990s by Digital Equipment Corporation for their OSF/1 version of the Unix operating system (later Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX). In June 2008, ...

– Advanced File System, designed by Digital Equipment Corporation for their Digital UNIX (now

Tru64 UNIX Tru64 UNIX is a discontinued 64-bit UNIX operating system for the Alpha instruction set architecture (ISA), currently owned by Hewlett-Packard (HP). Previously, Tru64 UNIX was a product of Compaq, and before that, Digital Equipment Corporation ( ...

) operating system. * APFS – Apple File System is a next-generation file system for Apple products. * AthFS –

AtheOS Syllable Desktop is a discontinued free and open-source operating system for Pentium and compatible processors. Its purpose is to create an easy-to-use desktop operating system for the home and small office user. It was forked from the stagnant ...

File System, a 64-bit journaled filesystem now used by

Syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

. Also called AFS. * BFS – the Boot File System used on System V release 4.0 and UnixWare. * BFS – the Be File System used on

BeOS BeOS is an operating system for personal computers first developed by Be Inc. in 1990. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was positioned as a multimedia platform that could be used by a substantial population of desktop users a ...

, occasionally misnamed as BeFS. Open source implementation called OpenBFS is used by the Haiku operating system. * Byte File System (BFS) - file system used by z/VM for Unix applications * Btrfs – is a copy-on-write file system for Linux announced by

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word '' ...

in 2007 and published under the GNU General Public License (GPL). *

CFS CFS is an acronym for: Organizations * Canadian Federation of Students * Canadian Forest Service * Center for Financial Studies, a research institute affiliated with Goethe University Frankfurt * Center for Subjectivity Research, a research insti ...

– The Cluster File System from Veritas, a Symantec company. It is the parallel access version of VxFS. *

CP/M CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...

file system — Native filesystem used in the CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) operating system which was first released in 1974. * DOS 3.x – Original floppy operating system and file system developed for the

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

. * Extent File System (EFS) – an older block filing system under

IRIX IRIX ( ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system and ...

. *

ext Ext, ext or EXT may refer to: * Ext functor, used in the mathematical field of homological algebra * Ext (JavaScript library), a programming library used to build interactive web applications * Exeter Airport (IATA airport code), in Devon, England ...

– 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, initially used on DOS and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and now widely used for portable USB storage and some other devices; FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 for 12-, 16- and

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculation ...

table depths. ** VFAT – Optional layer on

FAT system to allow long (up to 255 character) filenames instead of only the

8.3 filename An 8.3 filename (also called a short filename or SFN) is a filename convention used by old versions of DOS and versions of Microsoft Windows prior to Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.5. It is also used in modern Microsoft operating systems as an alterna ...

s allowed in the plain FAT filesystem. **

FATX File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers. Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on hard disks and other devices. It is often supported for compatibility reasons by ...

– A modified version of

FAT system that is used on the original Xbox console. * FFS (Amiga) – Fast File System, used on

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...

systems. This FS has evolved over time. Now counts FFS1, FFS Intl, FFS DCache, FFS2. * FFS – Fast File System, used on *

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...

systems * Fossil – Plan 9 from Bell Labs snapshot archival file system. * Files-11 –

OpenVMS OpenVMS, often referred to as just VMS, is a multi-user, multiprocessing and virtual memory-based operating system. It is designed to support time-sharing, batch processing, transaction processing and workstation applications. Customers using Ope ...

file system; also used on some

PDP-11 The PDP-11 is a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a set of products in the Programmed Data Processor (PDP) series. In total, around 600,000 PDP-11s of all models were sold, ...

systems; supports record-oriented files * Flex machine file system *

HAMMER A hammer is a tool, most often a hand tool, consisting of a weighted "head" fixed to a long handle that is swung to deliver an impact to a small area of an object. This can be, for example, to drive nails into wood, to shape metal (as w ...

— clustered DragonFly BSD filesystem, production-ready since DragonFly 2.2 (2009) *

HAMMER2 HAMMER2 is a successor to the HAMMER filesystem, redesigned from the ground up to support enhanced clustering. HAMMER2 supports online and batched deduplication, snapshots, directory entry indexing, multiple mountable filesystem roots, mounta ...

— recommended as the default root filesystem in DragonFly since 5.2 release in 2018 *

HFS HFS may refer to: Computing * Hardware functionality scan, a security mechanism used in Microsoft Windows operating systems * Hierarchical File System, a file system used by Apple Macintosh computers * Hierarchical File System (IBM MVS), used MV ...

– Hierarchical File System in IBM's z/OS; not to be confused with Apple's HFS. HFS is still supported but IBM's stated direction is

zFS ZFS (previously: Zettabyte File System) is a file system with volume management capabilities. It began as part of the Sun Microsystems Solaris operating system in 2001. Large parts of Solaris – including ZFS – were published under an open ...

. *

– 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+ HFS Plus or HFS+ (also known as Mac OS Extended or HFS Extended) is a journaling file system developed by Apple Inc. It replaced the Hierarchical File System (HFS) as the primary file system of Apple computers with the 1998 release of Mac OS 8.1 ...

– Updated version of Apple's HFS, Hierarchical File System, supported on Mac OS 8.1 & above, including macOS. 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 File System (HTFS) is the journaling file system used by current versions of SCO OpenServer Xinuos OpenServer, previously SCO UNIX and SCO Open Desktop (SCO ODT), is a closed source computer operating system developed by Santa ...

– High Throughput Filesystem, used on SCO OpenServer * ISO 9660 – Used on

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data. Computers can read—but not write or erase—CD-ROMs. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both comput ...

and DVD-ROM discs (

Rock Ridge ISO 9660 (also known as ECMA-119) is a file system for optical disc media. Being sold by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) the file system is considered an international technical standard. Since the specification is ava ...

and Joliet are extensions to this) * JFS – IBM Journaling file system, provided in Linux, OS/2, and

AIX Aix or AIX may refer to: Computing * AIX, a line of IBM computer operating systems *An Alternate Index, for a Virtual Storage Access Method Key Sequenced Data Set *Athens Internet Exchange, a European Internet exchange point Places Belgium ...

. Supports extents. * LFS – 4.4BSD implementation of a log-structured file system *

MFS MFS may refer to: Education *Miletich Fighting Systems, a mixed martial arts training camp founded by Pat Miletich *Moorestown Friends School, a private Quaker school located in Moorestown, New Jersey *Moscow Finnish School, a Finnish private sc ...

– Macintosh File System, used on early

Classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. The ...

systems. Succeeded by Hierarchical File System (HFS). * Next3 – A form of ext3 with snapshots support. *

– 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 * NeXT - NeXTstation and NeXTcube file system *

NetWare File System In computing, a NetWare File System (NWFS) is a file system based on a heavily modified version of FAT. It was used in the Novell NetWare operating system. It is the default and only file system for all volumes in versions 2.x through 4.x, and th ...

– The original

NetWare NetWare is a discontinued computer network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, using the IPX network protocol. The original NetWare product in 19 ...

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

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. * OS-9 file system * PFS – and PFS2, PFS3, etc. Technically interesting file system available for the

, 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 QNX4FS is an extent-based file system used by the QNX4 and QNX6 operating systems. As the file system uses soft updates, it remains consistent even after a power failure, without using journaling. Instead, the writes are carefully ordered and ...

– File system that is used in QNX version 4 and 6. * ReFS (Resilient File System) – New file system by Microsoft that is built on the foundations of NTFS (but cannot boot, has a default cluster size of 64 KB and does not support compression) and is intended to be used with the Windows Server 2012 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 * RFS – Native filesystem for RTEMS * 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. *

Soup (Apple) Soup is the file system for the Apple Newton platform, based on a shallow database system. The Newton considers its internal storage, and each inserted card, as a separate "store" (a volume). Any store may have either read/write "soups" (databases ...

– the "file system" for Apple Newton Platform, structured as a shallow database *

Tux3 Tux3 is an open-source versioning filesystem created by Daniel Phillips. He introduced the filesystem as a public replacement for his Tux2 filesystem which had encountered licensing issues due to the filing of several patents. Phillips had previou ...

– 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 Solaris may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Solaris'' (1972 film), directed by ...

and older

systems * UFS2 – Unix File System, used on newer

systems * VxFS Veritas file system, first commercial journaling file system;

HP-UX HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is Hewlett Packard Enterprise's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on Unix System V (initially System III) and first released in 1984. Current versions support HPE Integrity Ser ...

, Linux,

, UnixWare *

VTOC In the IBM System/360Including the successors S/370 through z/Architecture storage architecture, the Volume Table of Contents (VTOC), is a data structure that provides a way of locating the data sets that reside on a particular DASD volume. With t ...

(Volume Table Of Contents) - Data structure on IBM mainframe direct-access storage devices (DASD) such as disk drives that provides a way of locating the data sets that reside on the

DASD A direct-access storage device (DASD) (pronounced ) is a secondary storage device in which "each physical record has a discrete location and a unique address". The term was coined by IBM to describe devices that allowed random access to data, t ...

volume. * XFS – Used on

SGI SGI may refer to: Companies *Saskatchewan Government Insurance *Scientific Games International, a gambling company *Silicon Graphics, Inc., a former manufacturer of high-performance computing products *Silicon Graphics International, formerly Rac ...

and Linux systems *

– z/OS File System; not to be confused with other file systems named zFS or ZFS. *

- an IBM research project to develop a distributed, decentralized file system; not to be confused with other file systems named zFS or ZFS. *

ZFS ZFS (previously: Zettabyte File System) is a file system with volume management capabilities. It began as part of the Sun Microsystems Solaris operating system in 2001. Large parts of Solaris – including ZFS – were published under an open ...

a combined file system and logical volume manager designed by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

File systems with built-in fault-tolerance

These file systems have built-in checksumming and either mirroring or parity for extra redundancy on one or several block devices: * Bcachefs – It's not yet upstream, full data and metadata checksumming, bcache is the bottom half of the filesystem. * Btrfs – A file system based on B-Trees, initially designed at

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

. *

and

– DragonFly BSD's primary filesystems, created by

Matt Dillon Matthew Raymond Dillon (born February 18, 1964) is an American actor. He has received various accolades, including an Oscar and Grammy nomination. Dillon made his feature film debut in '' Over the Edge'' (1979) and established himself as a te ...

. *

NOVA A nova (plural novae or novas) is a transient astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently "new" star (hence the name "nova", which is Latin for "new") that slowly fades over weeks or months. Causes of the dramati ...

– The "non-volatile memory accelerated" file system for persistent main memory. * ReFS (Resilient File System) – A file system by Microsoft with built-in resiliency features. * Reliance – A transactional file system with CRCs, created by Datalight. * Reliance Nitro – A tree-based transactional file system with CRCs, developed for high performance and reliability in embedded systems, from Datalight. * WekaFS – a shared parallel filesystem that delivers extreme performance at any scale and is optimized for NVMe and the hybrid cloud. *

– Has checksums for all data; important metadata is always redundant, additional redundancy levels are user-configurable; copy-on-write and transactional writing ensure metadata consistency; corrupted data can be automatically repaired if a redundant copy is available. Created by

for use on

10 and

OpenSolaris OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system based on Solaris and created by Sun Microsystems. It was also, perhaps confusingly, the name of a project initiated by Sun to build a developer and user community around th ...

, ported to

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

7.0,

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was forked. It continues to be actively developed and is a ...

(as of August 2009), Linux and to

FUSE Fuse or FUSE may refer to: Devices * Fuse (electrical), a device used in electrical systems to protect against excessive current ** Fuse (automotive), a class of fuses for vehicles * Fuse (hydraulic), a device used in hydraulic systems to protect ...

(not to be confused with the two zFSes from IBM)

File systems optimized for flash memory, solid state media

Solid state media, such as

flash memory Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both us ...

, are similar to disks in their interfaces, but have different problems. At low level, they require special handling such as

wear leveling Wear leveling (also written as wear levelling) is a technique Wear leveling techniques for flash memory systems. for prolonging the service life of some kinds of erasable computer storage media, such as flash memory, which is used in solid-state d ...

and different

error detection and correction In information theory and coding theory with applications in computer science and telecommunication, error detection and correction (EDAC) or error control are techniques that enable reliable delivery of digital data over unreliable communi ...

algorithms. Typically a device such as a solid-state drive handles such operations internally and therefore a regular file system can be used. However, for certain specialized installations (embedded systems, industrial applications) a file system optimized for plain flash memory is advantageous. * APFS – Apple File System is a next-generation file system for Apple products. *

CHFS CHFS is a file system developed at the Department of Software Engineering, University of Szeged, Hungary. It was the first open source flash memory-specific file system written for the NetBSD operating system. Intended usage is over raw flash de ...

– a

filesystem for embedded systems optimised for raw flash media. * exFAT – Microsoft proprietary system intended for flash cards (see also XCFiles, an exFAT implementation for Wind River VxWorks and other embedded operating systems). * ExtremeFFS – internal filesystem for SSDs. * F2FS – Flash-Friendly File System. An open source Linux file system introduced by Samsung in 2012. * FFS2 (presumably preceded by FFS1), one of the earliest flash file systems. Developed and patented by Microsoft in the early 1990s. * JFFS – original log structured Linux file system for NOR flash media. * JFFS2 – successor of JFFS, for NAND and NOR flash. *

LSFS A log-structured filesystem is a file system in which data and metadata are written sequentially to a circular buffer, called a log. The design was first proposed in 1988 by John K. Ousterhout and Fred Douglis and first implemented in 1992 by O ...

– a Log-structured file system with writable snapshots and inline data deduplication created by

StarWind Software StarWind Software, Inc. is a privately held Beverly, Massachusetts-based computer software and hardware appliance company specializing in storage virtualization and software-defined storage. History StarWind Software began in 2008 as a spin ...

. Uses DRAM and flash to cache spinning disks. *

LogFS LogFS is a Linux log-structured and scalable flash file system, intended for use on large devices of flash memory. It is written by Jörn Engel and in part sponsored by the CE Linux Forum. LogFS was introduced in the mainline Linux kernel in v ...

– intended to replace JFFS2, better scalability. No longer under active development. * NILFS – a log-structured file system for Linux with continuous snapshots. * Non-Volatile File System – the system for

introduced by Palm, Inc. *

– the "non-volatile memory accelerated" file system for persistent main memory. * OneFS – a filesystem utilized by Isilon. It supports selective placement of meta-data directly onto flash SSD. * Segger Microcontroller Systems emFile – filesystem for deeply embedded applications which supports both NAND and NOR flash. Wear leveling, fast read and write, and very low RAM usage. * SPIFFS – SPI Flash File System, a wear-leveling filesystem intended for small NOR flash devices. *

TFAT Transaction-Safe FAT File System (TFAT) and Transaction-Safe Extended FAT File System (TexFAT) refer to two file systems used in Microsoft products to provide transaction-safety for data stored on a disk. The goal is to reduce the risk of data loss ...

– a transactional version of the FAT filesystem. * TrueFFS – internal file system for SSDs, implementing error correction, bad block re-mapping and wear-leveling. * UBIFS – successor of JFFS2, optimized to utilize NAND and NOR flash. * Write Anywhere File Layout (WAFL) – an internal file system utilized by NetApp within their DataONTAP OS, originally optimized to use non-volatile DRAM. WAFL uses RAID-DP to protect against multiple disk failures and NVRAM for transaction log replays. * YAFFS – a log-structured file system designed for NAND flash, but also used with NOR flash.
LittleFS
– a little fail-safe filesystem designed for microcontrollers. * JesFS – Jo's embedded serial FileSystem. A very small footprint and robust filesystem, designed for very small microcontroller (16/32 bit). Open Source and licensed under GPL v3.

Record-oriented file systems

In record-oriented file systems files are stored as a collection of records. They are typically associated with

mainframe A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise ...

and

minicomputer A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a class of smaller general purpose computers that developed in the mid-1960s and sold at a much lower price than mainframe and mid-size computers from IBM and its direct competitors. In a 1970 survey, ...

operating systems. Programs read and write whole records, rather than bytes or arbitrary byte ranges, and can seek to a record boundary but not within records. The more sophisticated record-oriented file systems have more in common with simple databases than with other file systems. * CMS file system – The native file system of the Conversational Monitor System component of VM/370 * Files-11 – early versions were record-oriented; support for "streams" was added later * Michigan Terminal System (MTS) – provides "line files" where record lengths and line numbers are associated as metadata with each record in the file, lines can be added, replaced, updated with the same or different length records, and deleted anywhere in the file without the need to read and rewrite the entire file. *

OS4000 OS4000 is a proprietary operating system introduced by GEC Computers Limited in 1977 as the successor to GEC DOS, for its range of GEC 4000 series 16-bit, and later 32-bit, minicomputers. OS4000 was developed through to late 1990s, and has bee ...

for GEC's OS4000 operating system, on the

GEC 4000 series The GEC 4000 was a series of 16/32-bit minicomputers produced by GEC Computers Ltd in the United Kingdom during the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. History GEC Computers was formed in 1968 as a business unit of the GEC conglomerate. It in ...

minicomputers * A FAT12 and FAT16 (and FAT32) extension to support database-like file types ''random file'', ''direct file'', ''keyed file'' and ''sequential file'' in Digital Research FlexOS, IBM

4680 OS FlexOS is a discontinued modular real-time multiuser multitasking operating system (RTOS) designed for computer-integrated manufacturing, laboratory, retail and financial markets. Developed by Digital Research's Flexible Automation Business U ...

and Toshiba

4690 OS 4690 Operating System (sometimes shortened to 4690 OS or 4690) is a specially designed point of sale (POS) operating system, originally sold by IBM. In 2012, IBM sold its retail business, including this product, to Toshiba, which assumed support. ...

.IBM. ''4690 OS Programming Guide Version 5.2'', IBM document SC30-4137-01, 2007-12-06 ( tp://ftp.software.ibm.com/software/retail/pubs/sw/opsys/4690/ver5r2/bsi1_PG_mst.pdf. The record size is stored on a file-by-file basis in special entries in the directory table.Caldera (1997). ''Caldera OpenDOS Machine Readable Source Kit 7.01''. The FDOS.EQU file in the machine readable source kit has equates for the corresponding directory entries. * Sequential access methods for IBM's z/OS and z/VSE mainframe operating systems: Basic Sequential Access Method (BSAM), Basic Partitioned Access Method (BPAM) and Queued Sequential Access Method (QSAM); see Access methods and Data set (IBM mainframe) for more examples * Pick Operating System – A record-oriented filesystem and database that uses hash-coding to store data. * Shared File System (SFS) for IBM's VM *

Virtual Storage Access Method Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM) is an IBM DASD file storage access method, first used in the OS/VS1, OS/VS2 Release 1 (SVS) and Release 2 (MVS) operating systems, later used throughout the Multiple Virtual Storage (MVS) architecture and now ...

(VSAM) for IBM's z/OS and z/VSE mainframe operating systems

Shared-disk file systems

Shared-disk file systems (also called ''shared-storage file systems'',

SAN file system The SAN File System (SFS) is a high-performance, clustered file system created by the company DataPlow. SFS enables fast access to shared files located on shared, storage area network (SAN)-attached storage devices. SFS utilizes the high-speed, ...

Clustered file system A clustered file system is a file system which is shared by being simultaneously mounted on multiple servers. There are several approaches to clustering, most of which do not employ a clustered file system (only direct attached storage for e ...

or even ''cluster file systems'') are primarily used in a storage area network where all nodes directly access the

block storage In computing (specifically data transmission and data storage), a block, sometimes called a physical record, is a sequence of bytes or bits, usually containing some whole number of records, having a maximum length; a ''block size''. Data thu ...

where the file system is located. This makes it possible for nodes to fail without affecting access to the file system from the other nodes. Shared-disk file systems are normally used in a high-availability cluster together with storage on hardware RAID. Shared-disk file systems normally do not scale over 64 or 128 nodes. Shared-disk file systems may be symmetric where

metadata Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...

is distributed among the nodes or asymmetric with centralized

servers. *

CXFS The CXFS file system (Clustered XFS) is a proprietary software, proprietary shared disk file system designed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) specifically to be used in a storage area network (SAN) environment. A significant difference between CXFS and o ...

(Clustered XFS) from Silicon Graphics (SGI). Available for Linux, Mac, Windows, Solaris, AIX and IRIX,. Asymmetric. *

Dell Fluid File System Dell Fluid File System, or FluidFS, is a shared-disk filesystem made by Dell that provides distributed file systems to clients. Customers buy an appliance: a combination of purpose-built network-attached storage (NAS) controllers with integrat ...

(formerly ExaFS) proprietary software sold by

Dell Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies. Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data ...

. Shared-disk system sold as an appliance providing distributed file systems to clients. Running on Intel based hardware serving NFS v2/v3, SMB/CIFS and AFP to Windows, macOS, Linux and other UNIX clients. *

Blue Whale Clustered file system Blue Whale Clustered file system (BWFS) is a shared disk file system (also called clustered file system, ''shared storage file systems'' or SAN file system) made by Tianjin Zhongke Blue Whale Information Technologies Company in China. Overview ...

(BWFS) from Zhongke Blue Whale. Asymmetric. Available for

, Linux, and macOS. *

SAN File System The SAN File System (SFS) is a high-performance, clustered file system created by the company DataPlow. SFS enables fast access to shared files located on shared, storage area network (SAN)-attached storage devices. SFS utilizes the high-speed, ...

(SFS) from DataPlow. Available for Windows, Linux, Solaris, and macOS. Symmetric and Asymmetric. * EMC Celerra HighRoad from EMC. Available for Linux, AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris and Windows. Asymmetric. * Files-11 on VMSclusters, released by DEC in 1983, now from HP. Symmetric. * GFS2 (''Global File System'') from

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become ass ...

. Available for Linux under GPL. Symmetric ( GDLM) or Asymmetric ( GULM). * IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS) Windows, Linux, AIX . Parallel *

Nasan The Nasan Clustered File System is a shared disk file system created by the company DataPlow. Nasan software enables high-speed access to shared files located on shared, storage area network (SAN)-attached storage devices by utilizing the high-perfo ...

Clustered File System from DataPlow. Available for Linux and Solaris. Asymmetric. * Oracle ACFS from

. Available for Linux ( Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and

Oracle Enterprise Linux Oracle Linux (abbreviated OL, formerly known as Oracle Enterprise Linux or OEL) is a Linux distribution packaged and freely distributed by Oracle, available partially under the GNU General Public License since late 2006. It is compiled from Red ...

5 only). Symmetric. * OCFS2 (''Oracle Cluster File System'') from

. Available for Linux under GPL. Symmetric. * QFS from

. Available for Linux (client only) and Solaris (metadata server and client). Asymmetric. * ScoutFS from Versity. Available for Linux under the GPL. Symmetric. *

StorNext File System StorNext File System (SNFS), colloquially referred to as StorNext is a shared disk file system made by Quantum Corporation. StorNext enables multiple Windows, Linux and Apple workstations to access shared block storage over a Fibre Channel networ ...

from

Quantum In physics, a quantum (plural quanta) is the minimum amount of any physical entity (physical property) involved in an interaction. The fundamental notion that a physical property can be "quantized" is referred to as "the hypothesis of quantizati ...

. Asymmetric. Available for

, Linux, macOS,

and Windows. Interoperable with

Xsan Xsan () is Apple Inc.'s storage area network (SAN) or clustered file system for macOS. Xsan enables multiple Mac desktop and Xserve systems to access shared block storage over a Fibre Channel network. With the Xsan file system installed, these ...

. Formerly known as CVFS. *

Veritas Storage Foundation Veritas Storage Foundation (VSF ), previously known as Veritas Foundation Suite, is a computer software product made by Veritas Software that combines Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) and Veritas File System (VxFS) to provide online-storage managem ...

from

Symantec Symantec may refer to: *An American consumer software company now known as Gen Digital Inc. *A brand of enterprise security software purchased by Broadcom Inc. Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier ...

. Available for AIX, HP-UX, Linux and Solaris. Asymmetric. *

from Apple Inc. Available for macOS. Asymmetric. Interoperable with

. * VMFS from VMware/ EMC Corporation. Available for

VMware ESX Server VMware ESXi (formerly ESX) is an enterprise-class, type-1 hypervisor developed by VMware for deploying and serving virtual computers. As a type-1 hypervisor, ESXi is not a software application that is installed on an operating system (OS); ...

. Symmetric.

Distributed file systems

Distributed file systems are also called network file systems. Many implementations have been made, they are location dependent and they have access control lists (ACLs), unless otherwise stated below. * 9P, the Plan 9 from Bell Labs and Inferno distributed file system protocol. One implementation is v9fs. No ACLs. * Amazon S3 *

Andrew File System The Andrew File System (AFS) is a distributed file system which uses a set of trusted servers to present a homogeneous, location-transparent file name space to all the client workstations. It was developed by Carnegie Mellon University as part of t ...

(AFS) is scalable and location independent, has a heavy client cache and uses Kerberos for authentication. Implementations include the original from IBM (earlier Transarc), Arla and OpenAFS. *

Avere Systems Avere Systems was a privately held technology company that produces computer data storage and data management infrastructure. The company was founded in 2008 and is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As of March 2017, the company had raised over $ ...

has AvereOS that creates a

NAS Nas (born 1973) is the stage name of American rapper Nasir Jones. Nas, NaS, or NAS may also refer to: Aviation * Nasair, a low-cost airline carrier and subsidiary based in Eritrea * National Air Services, an airline in Saudi Arabia ** Nas Air ( ...

protocol file system in object storage. * DCE Distributed File System ( DCE/DFS) from IBM (earlier Transarc) is similar to AFS and focus on full POSIX file system semantics and high availability. Available for

and

under a proprietary software license. *

File Access Listener DECnet is a suite of network protocols created by Digital Equipment Corporation. Originally released in 1975 in order to connect two PDP-11 minicomputers, it evolved into one of the first peer-to-peer network architectures, thus transforming DEC ...

(FAL) is an implementation of the

Data Access Protocol In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted. ...

(DAP) which is part of the DECnet suite of network protocols created by Digital Equipment Corporation. * Magma, developed by Tx0. *

MapR FS The MapR File System (MapR FS) is a clustered file system that supports both very large-scale and high-performance uses. MapR FS supports a variety of interfaces including conventional read/write file access via NFS and a FUSE interface, as well ...

is a distributed high-performance file system that exhibits file, table and messaging APIs. * Microsoft Office Groove shared workspace, used for DoHyki *

NetWare Core Protocol The NetWare Core Protocol (NCP) is a network protocol used in some products from Novell, Inc. It is usually associated with the client-server operating system Novell NetWare which originally supported primarily MS-DOS client stations, but later su ...

(NCP) from

Novell Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare. Under the lead ...

is used in networks based on

. * Network File System (NFS) originally from

is the standard in UNIX-based networks. NFS may use Kerberos authentication and a client cache. *

Linked-OS provides distributed filesystem across OS4000 systems. * Self-certifying File System (SFS), a global network file system designed to securely allow access to file systems across separate administrative domains. * Server Message Block (SMB) originally from IBM (but the most common version is modified heavily by Microsoft) is the standard in Windows-based networks. SMB is also known as ''Common Internet File System (CIFS)''. SMB may use Kerberos authentication.

Distributed fault-tolerant file systems

Distributed fault-tolerant replication of data between nodes (between servers or servers/clients) for high availability and offline (disconnected) operation. *

Coda Coda or CODA may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * Movie coda, a post-credits scene * ''Coda'' (1987 film), an Australian horror film about a serial killer, made for television *''Coda'', a 2017 American experimental film from Na ...

from

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

focuses on bandwidth-adaptive operation (including disconnected operation) using a client-side cache for mobile computing. It is a descendant of AFS-2. It is available for Linux under the GPL. * Distributed File System (Dfs) from Microsoft focuses on location transparency and high availability. Available for Windows under a proprietary software license. *

and

– DragonFly BSD's filesystems for clustered storage, created by

. * InterMezzo from

Cluster File Systems Lustre is a type of parallel distributed file system, generally used for large-scale cluster computing. The name Lustre is a portmanteau word derived from Linux and cluster. Lustre file system software is available under the GNU General Public ...

uses synchronization over HTTP. Available for Linux under GPL but no longer in development since the developers are working on

Lustre Lustre or Luster may refer to: Places * Luster, Norway, a municipality in Vestlandet, Norway ** Luster (village), a village in the municipality of Luster * Lustre, Montana, an unincorporated community in the United States Entertainment * '' ...

. * LizardFS a networking, distributed file system based on MooseFS * Moose File System (MooseFS) is a networking, distributed file system. It spreads data over several physical locations (servers), which are visible to a user as one resource. Works on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris and macOS. Master server and chunkservers can also run on Solaris and Windows with Cygwin. *

Scality Scality is a company based in San Francisco, California that develops software-defined object storage. RING is the company's commercial product. Scality RING software deploys on industry-standard servers to store objects and files. Scality also ...

is a distributed fault-tolerant filesystem. * Tahoe-LAFS is an open source secure, decentralized, fault-tolerant filesystem utilizing encryption as the basis for a least-authority replicated design. * A FAT12 and FAT16 (and FAT32) extension to support automatic file distribution across nodes with extra attributes like ''local'', ''mirror on update'', ''mirror on close'', ''compound on update'', ''compound on close'' in IBM

and Toshiba

. The distribution attributes are stored on a file-by-file basis in special entries in the directory table.IBM (2003). ''Information about 4690 OS unique file distribution attributes'', IBM document R1001487, 2003-07-30. (): " ..file types are stored in the "Reserved bits" portion of the PC-DOS file directory structure ..only 4690 respects and preserves these attributes. Various non-4690 operating systems take different actions if these bits are turned on ..when copying from a diskette created on a 4690 system. ..PC-DOS and Windows 2000 Professional will copy the file without error and zero the bits. OS/2 ..1.2 ..will refuse to copy the file unless ..first run CHKDSK /F on the file. After ..CHKDSK, it will copy the file and zero the bits. ..when ..copy ..back to the 4690 system, ..file will copy as a local file."IBM. ''4690 save and restore file distribution attributes''. IBM document R1000622, 2010-08-31 ().

Distributed parallel file systems

Distributed

parallel Parallel is a geometric term of location which may refer to: Computing * Parallel algorithm * Parallel computing * Parallel metaheuristic * Parallel (software), a UNIX utility for running programs in parallel * Parallel Sysplex, a cluster of IBM ...

file systems stripe data over multiple servers for high performance. They are normally used in high-performance computing (HPC). Some of the distributed parallel file systems use an

object storage device Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...

(OSD) (in Lustre called OST) for chunks of data together with centralized

servers. *

is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

high-performance distributed parallel file system for Linux, used on many of the largest computers in the world. *

Parallel Virtual File System The Parallel Virtual File System (PVFS) is an open-source parallel file system. A parallel file system is a type of distributed file system that distributes file data across multiple servers and provides for concurrent access by multiple tasks of ...

(PVFS, PVFS2,

OrangeFS OrangeFS is an open-source parallel file system, the next generation of Parallel Virtual File System (PVFS). A parallel file system is a type of distributed file system that distributes file data across multiple servers and provides for concurr ...

). Developed to store virtual system images, with a focus on non-shared writing optimizations. Available for Linux under GPL.

Distributed parallel fault-tolerant file systems

Distributed file systems, which also are

and

fault tolerant Fault tolerance is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of one or more faults within some of its components. If its operating quality decreases at all, the decrease is proportional to the ...

, stripe and replicate data over multiple servers for high performance and to maintain data integrity. Even if a server fails no data is lost. The file systems are used in both high-performance computing (HPC) and high-availability clusters. All file systems listed here focus on high availability, scalability and high performance unless otherwise stated below. In development: *

from IBM (not to be confused with

from

or the zFS file system provided with IBM's z/OS operating system) focus on cooperative cache and distributed transactions and uses

s. Under development and not freely available. *

/ANVIL by

PNFS Network File System (NFS) is a distributed file system protocol originally developed by Sun Microsystems (Sun) in 1984, allowing a user on a client computer to access files over a computer network much like local storage is accessed. NFS, like ...

(Parallel NFS) – Clients available for Linux and

and back-ends from NetApp,

Panasas Panasas is a data storage company that creates network-attached storage for technical computing environments. History Panasas is a computer data storage product company and is headquartered in San Jose, California. Panasas received seed funding ...

, EMC Highroad and IBM

GPFS GPFS (General Parallel File System, brand name IBM Spectrum Scale) is high-performance clustered file system software developed by IBM. It can be deployed in shared-disk or shared-nothing distributed parallel modes, or a combination of these. It ...

* Coherent Remote File System (CRFS) – requires Btrfs * Parallel Optimized Host Message Exchange Layered File System (POHMELFS) and Distributed STorage (DST). POSIX compliant, added to Linux kernel 2.6.30

Peer-to-peer file systems

Some of these may be called

cooperative storage cloud A cooperative storage cloud is a decentralized model of networked computer data storage, online storage where data is stored on multiple computers (Node (networking), nodes), hosted by the participants cooperating in the cloud. For the cooperative ...

. *

Cleversafe IBM Cloud Object Storage is a service offered by IBM for storing and accessing unstructured data. The object storage service can be deployed on-premise, as part of IBM Cloud Platform offerings, or in hybrid form. The offering can store any typ ...

uses Cauchy Reed–Solomon

information dispersal algorithms Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random ...

to separate data into unrecognizable slices and distribute them, via secure Internet connections, to multiple storage locations. *

is a distributed filesystem using the

Chord Chord may refer to: * Chord (music), an aggregate of musical pitches sounded simultaneously ** Guitar chord a chord played on a guitar, which has a particular tuning * Chord (geometry), a line segment joining two points on a curve * Chord ( ...

peer-to-peer protocol. *

IPFS The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is a protocol, hypermedia and file sharing peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system. IPFS uses content-addressing to uniquely identify each file in a global namespac ...

InterPlanetary File System is p2p, worldwide distributed content-addressable, file-system.

Special-purpose file systems

* aufs an enhanced version of UnionFS stackable unification file system *

AXFS AXFS (Advanced XIP Filesystem) is a compressed read-only file system for Linux, initially developed at Intel, and now maintained at Numonyx. It was designed to use execute in place (XIP) alongside compression aiming to reduce boot and program loa ...

(small footprint compressed read-only, with XIP) * Barracuda WebDAV plug-in. Secure Network File Server for embedded devices. * Boot File System is used on UnixWare to store files necessary for its boot process. *

cdfs CDfs is a virtual file system for Unix-like operating systems; it provides access to data and audio tracks on Compact Discs. When the CDfs driver mounts a Compact Disc, it represents each track as a file. This is consistent with the Unix conve ...

(reading and writing of CDs) *

Compact Disc File System The Compact Disc File System (CDFS) is a file system for read-only and write-once CD-ROMs developed by Simson Garfinkel and J. Spencer Love at the MIT Media Lab between 1985 and 1986. The file system provided for the creation, modification, ren ...

(reading and writing of CDs; experimental) *

cfs CFS is an acronym for: Organizations * Canadian Federation of Students * Canadian Forest Service * Center for Financial Studies, a research institute affiliated with Goethe University Frankfurt * Center for Subjectivity Research, a research insti ...

(caching) *

Cramfs The compressed ROM/RAM file system (or cramfs) is a Free software, free (GNU General Public License, GPL'ed) read-only Linux kernel, Linux file system designed for simplicity and space-efficiency. It is mainly used in embedded system, embedded an ...

(small footprint compressed read-only) * Davfs2 ( WebDAV) * Freenet – Decentralized, censorship-resistant *

FTPFS FTPFS refers to file systems that support access to a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server through standard file system application programming interfaces (APIs). The ftpfs command in Plan 9 was originated by Dennis Ritchie and was included in the ...

(FTP access) * GmailFS (Google Mail File System) * GridFS – GridFS is a specification for storing and retrieving files that exceed the BSON-document size limit of 16 MB for MongoDB. * lnfs (long names) *

LTFS The Linear Tape File System (LTFS) is a file system that allows files stored on magnetic tape to be accessed in a similar fashion to those on disk or removable flash drives. It requires both a specific format of data on the tape media and software ...

(Linear Tape File System for LTO and Enterprise tape) * MVFS – MultiVersion File System, proprietary, used by

Rational ClearCase Rational ClearCase is a family of computer software tools that supports software configuration management (SCM) of source code and other software development assets. It also supports design-data management of electronic design artifacts, thus ena ...

.
Nexfs
Combines Block, File, Object and Cloud storage into a single pool of auto-tiering POSIX compatible storage. * romfs * SquashFS (compressed read-only) * UMSDOS, UVFAT – FAT file systems extended to store permissions and metadata (and in the case of UVFAT, VFAT long file names), used for Linux * UnionFS – stackable unification file system, which can appear to merge the contents of several directories (branches), while keeping their physical content separate * Venti – Plan 9 de-duplicated storage used by Fossil.

Pseudo file systems

devfs In Unix-like operating systems, a device file or special file is an interface to a device driver that appears in a file system as if it were an ordinary file. There are also special files in DOS, OS/2, and Windows. These special files allow an ...

– a virtual file system in Unix-like operating systems for managing device nodes on-the-fly * procfs – a pseudo-file system, used to access kernel information about processes * tmpfs – in-memory temporary file system (on Unix-like platforms) *

sysfs sysfs is a pseudo file system provided by the Linux kernel that exports information about various kernel subsystems, hardware devices, and associated device drivers from the kernel's device model to user space through virtual files. In addition ...

– a virtual file system in Linux holding information about buses, devices, firmware, filesystems, etc. *

debugfs debugfs is a special file system available in the Linux kernel since version 2.6.10-rc3.Linux: DebugFS
, by Jeremy, De ...

– a virtual file system in Linux for accessing and controlling kernel debugging *

configfs Configfs is a RAM-based virtual file system provided by the 2.6 Linux kernel. Details Configfs appears similar to sysfs but they are in fact different and complementary. Configfs is for creating, managing and destroying kernel objects from user-spa ...

– a writable file system used to configure various kernel components of Linux * sysctlfs – allow accessing sysctl nodes via a file system; available on

via PUFFS,

kernel via a 3rd-party module, and Linux as a part of Linux procfs. * kernfs – a file system found on some BSD systems (notably

) that provides access to some kernel state variables; similar to sysctlfs, Linux procfs and Linux sysfs. *

wikifs 9P (or the Plan 9 Filesystem Protocol or Styx) is a network protocol developed for the Plan 9 from Bell Labs distributed operating system as the means of connecting the components of a Plan 9 system. Files are key objects in Plan 9. They repr ...

– a server application for

Plan 9 Plan 9 or Plan Nine may refer to: Music * Plan 9 (band), a psychedelic rock band from Rhode Island * ''Plan 9'', an album by Big Guitars From Memphis with Rick Lindy * "Plan 9", a song on the 1993 album ''Gorgeous'' by electronica band 808 Stat ...

's virtual, wiki, file system

Encrypted file systems

* eCryptfs – a stacked cryptographic file system in the Linux kernel since 2.6.19 * Secure Shell File System (SSHFS) – locally mount a remote directory on a server using only a secure shell login. * EncFS, GPL Encrypted file system in user-space * Rubberhose filesystem * EFS – an encrypted file system for

systems and

. An extension of NTFS *

, with encryption support.

File system interfaces

These are not really file systems; they allow access to file systems from an operating system standpoint. *

(file system in userspace, like

LUFS Loudness, K-weighted, relative to full scale (LKFS) is a standard loudness measurement unit used for audio normalization in broadcast television systems and other video and music streaming services. LKFS is standardized in ITU-R BS.1770. In March ...

but better maintained) *

(Linux userland file system – seems to be abandoned in favour of

) * PUFFS (Userspace filesystem for NetBSD, including a compatibility layer called librefuse for porting existing FUSE-based applications) * VFS Virtual Filesystem

References

External links

File Systems
{{DEFAULTSORT:List Of File Systems * File systems

Disk file systems

File systems with built-in fault-tolerance

File systems optimized for flash memory, solid state media

Record-oriented file systems

Shared-disk file systems

Distributed file systems

Distributed fault-tolerant file systems

Distributed parallel file systems

Distributed parallel fault-tolerant file systems

Peer-to-peer file systems

Special-purpose file systems

Pseudo file systems

Encrypted file systems

File system interfaces

See also

References

External links