30 Facts About File systems

Some file systems have been designed to be used for specific applications.

File systems can be used on many types of storage devices using various media.

Some file systems are used on local data storage devices; others provide file access via a network protocol .

Some file systems are "virtual", meaning that the supplied "files" are computed on request or are merely a mapping into a different file system used as a backing store.

File systems allocate space in a granular manner, usually multiple physical units on the device.

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File systems typically have directories which allow the user to group files into separate collections.

Many file systems put only some of the metadata for a file in the directory table, and the rest of the metadata for that file in a completely separate structure, such as the inode.

Some file systems provide for user defined attributes such as the author of the document, the character encoding of a document or the size of an image.

Some file systems allow for different data collections to be associated with one file name.

Some file systems maintain multiple past revisions of a file under a single file name; the filename by itself retrieves the most recent version, while prior saved version can be accessed using a special naming convention such as "filename;4" or "filename" to access the version four saves ago.

File systems include utilities to initialize, alter parameters of and remove an instance of the file system.

File systems utilities create, list, copy, move and delete files, and alter metadata.

Some file systems accept data for storage as a stream of bytes which are collected and stored in a manner efficient for the media.

Some file systems allow the specification of a fixed record length which is used for all writes and reads.

Frequently, retail systems are configured with a single file system occupying the entire storage device.

All file systems have some functional limit that defines the maximum storable data capacity within that system.

The Linear Tape File systems System uses a separate partition on the tape to record the index meta-data, thereby avoiding the problems associated with scattering directory entries across the entire tape.

File systems locking can be used as a concurrency control mechanism for individual files, but it typically does not protect the directory structure or file metadata.

File systems locking cannot automatically roll back a failed operation, such as a software upgrade; this requires atomicity.

Journaling file systems is one technique used to introduce transaction-level consistency to file system structures.

Data backup File systems typically do not provide support for direct backup of data stored in a transactional manner, which makes the recovery of reliable and consistent data sets difficult.

Examples of network file systems include clients for the NFS, AFS, SMB protocols, and file-system-like clients for FTP and WebDAV.

In non-Unix-like systems, such as TOPS-10 and other operating systems influenced by it, where the full filename or pathname of a file can include a device prefix, devices other than those containing file systems are referred to by a device prefix specifying the device, without anything following it.

Unix-like operating systems create a virtual file system, which makes all the files on all the devices appear to exist in a single hierarchy.

Unix-like systems assign a device name to each device, but this is not how the files on that device are accessed.

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The directory exists on many Unix systems and is intended specifically for use as a mount point for removable media such as CDs, DVDs, USB drives or floppy disks.

Unix-like operating File systems often include software and tools that assist in the mounting process and provide it new functionality.

FAT12 and FAT16 file systems had a limit on the number of entries in the root directory of the file system and had restrictions on the maximum size of FAT-formatted disks or partitions.

Support in other operating File systems is sparse since implementing support for exFAT requires a license.

File systems have a limit on the length of an individual filename.