Under Construction 
| OS |
Win
95/98
|
Win
2000+
| Mac
OS 1986
|
Mac
OS 9
|
Mac
OS X
|
Unix/Linux |
| File
System . |
FAT 32 |
NTFS |
HFS |
HFS + |
HFS+/UFS |
UFS |
| Max
Char. |
255 |
256 |
31 |
31 |
255 |
255 |
| Max
Path. |
260 |
260 |
|
|
|
|
| Restricted |
"/\*?<>|: |
"/\*?<>|: |
: |
:
/ | :
/ |
Space
/ |
| Directory
Separator |
\ |
\ |
: |
: |
: |
/ |
| Case
Sensitivity |
NO |
NO |
NO |
NO |
NO |
YES |
| Max File size |
4GB |
16EB |
4GB |
16EB |
16EB |
|
| Max Volume size |
2TB |
16EB |
2TB |
16EB |
16EB |
|
- FAT 32 - File Allocation Table
- - Windows 95/98
- NTFS
- NT (Windows New Technology) File system. Windows 2000+
- HFS + Hierarchical Filesystem
- Apple Mac File system.
- UFS - Unix File System
- Unix File System
- ext2 - extended file system
- Second extended file system - a file system for the Linux kernel (no journaling).
- ext3
- Third extended file system is a file system for the Linux kernel with journaling.
- ODS-5 - on-disk structure
- Used by Hewlett-Packard's OpenVMS operating system. Descended from older DEC operating systems. ODS-5 is an extended version of ODS-2 available on Alpha and Itanium. It was originally intended for file serving to Microsoft Windows or other non-VMS systems.
- ISO 9660
- A file system for CD-ROM media. (May also be used for DVDs but UDF is more common)
- UDF - Universal Disk Format
- - Vendor-independent file system for optical media. ISO/IEC 13346 (also known as ECMA-167)
defined by Optical Technology Storage Association (OTSA).
A successor of ISO 9660
May also be used for Flash media larger than 32 GB.
Network File System Protocols:
- NFS - Network File System
- Unix - originally developed by Sun Microsystems in 1984
- SMB - Server Message Block
- Windows. (also known as CIFS)
- AFP - Apple Filing Protocol
- Mac
- AFS - Andrew File System
- A distributed networked file system developed by Carnegie Mellon University as part of the Andrew Project.
- NCP - NetWare Core Protocol
- Novelle NetWare
- DFS - Distributed File System
- OFS standard derived from AFS.
DFS nor AFS have not achieved any major commercial success as compared to NFS.
The OpenAFS project lives on.
Mac/PC compatibility:
For the most flexibility format a drive as Fat 32 so it can be used in read/write mode on both PC's and Macs. Macs will leave FINDER.DAT files and newer versions of windows may leave thumbs.db files on the disk.
You can read NTFS drives from the Mac and (with Macdrive) read the HFS+ from Windows.
2K/XP only allows you to format a 32gig FAT32 partition, even though it can access a FAT32 partition of any size. I normally use Partition Magic to format if I need FAT32 volumes larger than 32gig.
See Also:
File Systems at: comentum.com
Wikipedia.org
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last updated 4 Sep 2005
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