Photo Courtesy: http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/ Files are essential to everything that we use in our computer in order to store data. File system keeps track of all the data that is being stored in memory bits. It is impossible for us to find the files stored in hard drive if its name isn’t assigned to that file, so the most important feature of file is its name. File management system is the method that is used by computer operating systems to store, manage and retrieve data. Along with the development of computers and operating systems, different file management systems like Jurassic, CP/M, FAT, NTFS, EXFS and many more have been introduced to manage data within files. Different file management systems are developed in order to increase the efficiency, quantity and security of files in our computer. Some file management systems support huge amount of data, some store and retrieve data quickly, some file system have encryption features while others don’t. Hence, file management system is very important in our operating to maintain: storage, retrieval, deletion, modification, encryption and others. Though there are different varieties of file management systems, nowadays there are mostly 4 types gaining popularity. They are: ReFS, NTFS, ExtFS and FAT. ReFS(Resilient File System) is a new generation file system that is added to Windows. It is supported only on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. It is designed to be highly available file system. Since it is the newest file management system, it'll be better to know some of its features:

1. It has high data integrity, less chance of corruption and downtime.
2. It has be designed to work with Windows Storage Space and has no check disc.
3. The problems can be fixed online in this file system.
4. It is considered to be better than NTFS since it is new and built from scratch whereas NTFS is 20 years old file management system.

There are some limitations of course. It doesn’t support disk quotas outside the file system. It doesn’t have feature known as hard links. Hard links allows a feature called data deduplication, which checks and eliminates the redundancy of file that is being stored, which increases the amount of data that can be stored. ReFS cannot be used in booting the OS since the OS heavily uses deduplication that is missing in ReFS. SQL servers have limited software support and there is no software to convert from NTFS to ReFS and vice-versa. If one wants to change the file system it requires to format the computer. NTFS (New Technology File System) was introduced in 1993 with Windows NT. It is the default file system used in Windows. New features like self-healing has been added to its latest version introduced in 2001. Before NTFS, security wasn’t available in other file systems. It allows security to file and folder levels. It also has other features like compression/encryption, and NTFS is the only file system that supports these features in Windows. FAT (File Allocation System) is the file system that is being used since 70s. There are generally two types of FAT systems that are used: FAT32 and FAT16. It is the simple type of file system used for small volume of memory. It doesn't have features like security, compression/encryption, self-healing and transaction log, hence its performance is better than NTFS and ReFS. However, the chance of risk like data corruption is high. It is compatible with everything and can be used in any operating system. In removable media like pen drives, USB in TV and radios, this system can be used since this system can be read by anything. To sum up, all the varieties of file management systems are in use. Though all these systems have their own advantages and disadvantages, we use them to make our work in computers efficient, easy and secure. Information Source: Windows File System video by ITFreeTraining.com, provided by DWIT Faculty Member, Rupen Rajkarnikar. His tech article will arrive in the Faculty Corner soon. Keep up with us.