computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, hardware and softw ...

, the NetWare File System (NWFS) was a file system based on a heavily optimized, journal-based

FAT In nutrition science, nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such chemical compound, compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers specif ...

file system. It was used in the

Novell 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 Internetwork Packet Exchange, IPX network protocol. The f ...

network operating system A network operating system (NOS) is a specialized operating system for a network device such as a router, switch or firewall. Historically operating systems with networking capabilities were described as network operating systems, because they ...

. It was the only file system for all volumes in NetWare versions 2.x, 3.x and 4.x, and the default and only file system for the SYS: volume continuing through version 5.x. Novell developed two varieties of NWFS: # 16-bit NWFS 286, used in NetWare 2.x # 32-bit NWFS 386, used in NetWare 3.x through NetWare 6.x. In NetWare 5 and above, Novell Storage Services (NSS, released in 1998), superseded the NWFS format. The NWFS on-disk format was never publicly released by Novell, but it was released by former Novell engineers as an open source project on Windows, Linux, and DOS in 2000. The project contains a complete rewrite of the NetWare File System, publishes all of the file system internals, and is hosted on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

and

GitLab GitLab is a software forge primarily developed by GitLab Inc. It is available as a community edition and a commercial edition. History GitLab was created in 2011 by Ukrainian programmer Dmitriy Zaporozhets as a side project written in Rub ...

. The published specifications for 32-bit NWFS are: * Maximum file size: 4 GB * Maximum volume size: 1 TB * Maximum files per volume: 2 million when using a single name space. * Maximum files per server: 16 million * Maximum directory entries: 16 million * Maximum volumes per server: 64 * Maximum volumes per partition: 8 * Maximum open files per server: 100,000 * Maximum directory tree depth: 100 levels * Characters used: ASCII double-byte * Maximum extended attributes: 512 * Maximum data streams: 10 * Support for different name spaces:

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Long names (a.k.a.

OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...

namespace),

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

* Support for restoring deleted files (salvage) * Support for journaling (Novell ''Transaction Tracking System'' a.k.a. ''TTS'') * Support for block suballocation, starting in NetWare 4.x For larger files, the file system utilized a performance feature named ''Turbo FAT''. Transparent file compression was also supported, although this had a significant impact on the performance of file serving. Every name space requires its own separate directory entry for each file. While the maximum number of directory entries is 16,000,000, two resident name spaces would reduce the usable maximum number of directory entries to 8,000,000, and three to 5,333,333. 16-bit NWFS could handle volumes of up to 256 MB. However, its only name-space support was a dedicated

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

to handle Macintosh clients. The Netware File System supported native RAID 0 and RAID 1 capabilities long before RAID systems came into use on personal computers. Disk mirroring and duplexing were basic features of the file system, and NWFS also supported multi-segmented volumes, and round-robin reads, much like RAID 0 and RAID 1 does today.

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Using the Transaction Tracking System
{{DEFAULTSORT:Netware File System Compression file systems Disk file systems Network file systems Novell NetWare

See also

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External links