By Gautam Mallick R7-212

What is file system?

a vital part of an operating system. a method, by which hierarchical data can be accessed, organized, navigated, stored and retrieved in form of files and folders. a piece of code which helps in maintenance of logical data structures residing on storage subsystems.

Functions
Efficient use of disk space. Efficient organization of data for quick storage and retrieval. Basic file operations like copy, move, create, delete and rename. Provision to boot up file system. also provide additional functions such as compression, encryption & file streams.

Types of File System

Disk File System

a file system designed for storage of files on a data storage device, which might be directly or indirectly connected to the computer.
Our area of interest is to study and compare the features of FAT 32 AND EXT3 disk file systems.

File Allocation Table (FAT)

The name originates from the usage of a table which centralizes the information about:

which areas belong to files. which areas are free or possibly unusable. where each file is stored on the disk

To limit the size of table, disk space is allocated to files in contiguous groups of hardware sectors called clusters.

As disk drives evolved, the maximum no. of clusters dramatically increased. So the number of bits used to identify each cluster has also grown. Successive versions of FAT format are named after number of table element bits: 12, 16, and 32.
All versions are backward compatible.

FAT 32

introduced with Windows 95 OSR2

to overcome the volume size limit of FAT16

its cluster values embedded in a 32 bit field for a maximum of approximately 268 million (228) clusters. allows for drive sizes of up to 8 TiB with 32 KiB clusters.

Design overview
Reserved sectors FAT Region Data region

content s

Boot sector

FS Informatio n Sector

More reserved sectors

File Allocation Table #1

File Allocation Table #2

Data Region (for files and directories)

(To end of partition or disk)

Size in sectors

(number of reserved sectors)

(number of FATs)*(sectors per FAT)

Number Of Clusters * Sectors Per Cluster

A FAT32 file system is composed of 3 different sections: The Reserved sectors

The FAT Region The Data Region

The Reserved sectors

located at the very beginning. The first reserved sector (sector 0) is Boot Sector (aka Partition Boot Record). includes an area called the BIOS Parameter Block and contains operating system's boot loader code. Total count of reserved sectors is indicated by a field inside Boot Sector.

Important information from Boot Sector is accessible through an OS structure called Drive Parameter Block in DOS and OS/2.
Reserved sectors also include: a File System Information Sector at sector 1 a Backup Boot Sector at Sector 6.

The FAT Region

contains two copies of File Allocation Table for redundancy checking.

These are maps of Data Region, indicating which clusters are used by files and directories.
The extra copy is rarely used, even by disk repair utilities.

The Data Region

This is where the actual file and directory data is stored. Size of files and subdirectories can be increased by adding more links to file's chain in the FAT.

Features

Small clusters are used resulting in saving valuable disk spaces. Drives formatted with FAT32 are less failure prone and are quite robust FAT32 is flexible and supports dynamic resizing. boot sectors are automatically backed up to other locations reducing changes of single point failures.

Disadvantages

Windows OS can only format FAT32 volume which is of size up to 32 GB during installation. Cluster size cannot be increased for making it use clusters less than 65,527. No inbuilt compression and system security. Maximum supported file size is 4 GB which is very less compared to the present day growth of data.

(Third extended)Ext3 file systems

used by the Linux kernel.

introduced to remove the problem of data loss and file system check after a system crash. is a journaled file system.

journaled file system

logs all changes made to file system

during disk write

uses it to reconstruct or repair file systems after situations like kernel crash or power failure. time required to repair the file systems depends on size of the journal rather than that of the file.

The

Different Journaling modes for ext3

Features

can be easily rolled back to ext2 file system

supports up to 16TB as the size for the file system provides larger directory indexing by Hashed Index Tree mechanism considered safer than other Linux file systems due to its relative simplicity and wider testing base.

Disadvantages

Doesnt have a defragmentation tool ext3 fills in zero with respect to pointer positions in inodes of deleted files making recovery of those files impossible. Doesnt provide transparent compression. accidental modification or corruption of

COMPARISON OF FILE SYSTEMS

Based on four factors:

Storage Limits File System Metadata

File System Characteristics

Allocation Strategy

Storage Limits
Maximum filename length 255 bytes 255 UTF-16 code units with LFN Maximum file size 16 GB to 2 TB 4 GB Maximum volume size 2 TB to 32 TB 512 MB to 8 TB

File System

ext3 fat32

File System Metadata

Creation timestamp s Last Archive Timestam p no no Access control lists Checksum POSIX file permissio ns

File Systems

ext3 fat32

no yes

yes no

no no

yes no

File System Characteristics

File Systems Case Sensitive File Change Log Snapshot

ext3
fat32

yes
no

no
no

no
no

Allocation Strategy
Variable Extents Block Size Allocate-on- Sparse flush Files Transparent compression

File Systems

ext3 fat32

no no

no no

no no

yes no

no no

Results and Conclusion

Factor Efficient File System Close Competitor Storage Limits File System Metadata File System Characteristics ext3 ext3 ext3 fat32 fat32 fat32

Allocation Strategies

ext3

fat32

ext3 file system supports higher storage capacities with higher storage limits, it records a lot of metadata to track all disk activities , and it has most of the efficient allocation strategies when compared to fat32 file systems .

QUESTIONS?

THANK YOU!