Disk file systems are usually block-oriented. Files in a block-oriented file system are sequences of blocks, often featuring fully random-access read, write, and modify operations. •
ADFS –
Acorn's Advanced Disc filing system, successor to
DFS. •
AdvFS – Advanced File System, designed by
Digital Equipment Corporation for their Digital UNIX (now
Tru64 UNIX) operating system. •
APFS – Apple File System is a file system for Apple products. •
AthFS –
AtheOS File System, a
64-bit journaled filesystem now used by
Syllable. Also called AFS. •
BFS – the Boot File System used on System V release 4.0 and UnixWare. •
BFS – the Be File System used on
BeOS, occasionally misnamed as BeFS. Open source implementation called OpenBFS is used by the
Haiku operating system. •
Byte File System (BFS) - file system used by
z/VM for Unix applications •
Btrfs – is a
copy-on-write file system for
Linux announced by
Oracle in 2007 and published under the
GNU General Public License (GPL). •
CFS – The Cluster File System from Veritas, a Symantec company. It is the parallel access version of VxFS. •
CP/M file system — Native filesystem used in the CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) operating system which was first released in 1974. •
DFS –
Acorn's Disc filing system. •
DOS 3.x – Original floppy operating system and file system developed for the
Apple II. •
Extent File System (EFS) – an older block filing system under
IRIX. •
ext – Extended file system, designed for
Linux systems. •
ext2 – Second extended file system, designed for
Linux systems. •
ext3 – A
journaled form of ext2. •
ext4 – A follow-up for
ext3 and also a
journaled filesystem with support for
extents. •
ext3cow – A
versioning file system form of ext3. •
FAT – File Allocation Table, initially used on
DOS and
Microsoft Windows and now widely used for portable USB storage and some other devices;
FAT12,
FAT16 and
FAT32 for 12-,
16- and
32-bit table depths. •
VFAT – Optional layer on
Microsoft Windows FAT system to allow long (up to 255 character) filenames instead of only the
8.3 filenames allowed in the plain FAT filesystem. •
FATX – A modified version of
Microsoft Windows FAT system that is used on the original
Xbox console. •
FFS (Amiga) – Fast File System, used on
Amiga systems. This FS has evolved over time. Now counts FFS1, FFS Intl, FFS DCache, FFS2. •
FFS – Berkeley Fast File System, used on *
BSD systems •
Fossil –
Plan 9 from Bell Labs snapshot archival file system. •
Files-11 –
OpenVMS file system; also used on some
PDP-11 systems; supports record-oriented files •
Flex machine file system •
HAMMER — clustered
DragonFly BSD filesystem, production-ready since DragonFly 2.2 (2009) •
HAMMER2 — recommended as the default root filesystem in DragonFly since 5.2 release in 2018 •
HFS – Hierarchical File System in IBM's
MVS from
MVS/ESA OpenEdition through
z/OS V2R4; not to be confused with Apple's HFS. IBM stated that
z/OS users should migrate from HFS to
zFS, and in z/OS V2R5 dropped support for HFS. •
HFS – Hierarchical File System, in use until HFS+ was introduced on Mac OS 8.1. Also known as Mac OS Standard format. Successor to Macintosh File System (MFS) & predecessor to HFS+; not to be confused with IBM's HFS provided with
z/OS •
HFS+ – Updated version of Apple's HFS, Hierarchical File System, supported on Mac OS 8.1 & above, including macOS. Supports file system journaling, enabling recovery of data after a system crash. Also referred to as 'Mac OS Extended format or HFS Plus •
HPFS – High Performance File System, used on
OS/2 •
HTFS – High Throughput Filesystem, used on
SCO OpenServer •
ISO 9660 – Used on
CD-ROM and
DVD-ROM discs (
Rock Ridge and
Joliet are extensions to this) •
JFS –
IBM Journaling file system, provided in
Linux,
OS/2, and
AIX. Supports
extents. •
LFS – 4.4BSD implementation of a
log-structured file system •
MFS – Macintosh File System, used on early
Classic Mac OS systems. Succeeded by Hierarchical File System (HFS). •
Next3 – A form of
ext3 with snapshots support. •
MFS – TiVo's Media File System, a proprietary fault tolerant format used on
TiVo hard drives for real time recording from live TV. •
Minix file system – Used on
Minix systems •
NILFS – Linux implementation of a
log-structured file system •
NTFS – (New Technology File System) Used on
Microsoft's
Windows NT-based operating systems •
NeXT -
NeXTstation and
NeXTcube file system •
NetWare File System – The original
NetWare 2.x–5.x file system, used optionally by later versions. •
NSS – Novell Storage Services. This is a new 64-bit
journaling file system using a balanced tree algorithm. Used in
NetWare versions 5.0-up and recently ported to
Linux. •
OneFS – One File System. This is a fully journaled, distributed file system used by
Isilon. OneFS uses FlexProtect and
Reed–Solomon encodings to support up to four simultaneous disk failures. •
OFS – Old File System, on Amiga. Good for floppies, but fairly useless on hard drives. •
OS-9 file system •
PFS – and PFS2, PFS3, etc. Technically interesting file system available for the
Amiga, performs very well under a lot of circumstances. •
ProDOS – Successor to DOS 3.x, for
Apple II computers, including the
IIgs •
Qnx4fs – File system that is used in
QNX version 4 and 6. •
ReFS (Resilient File System) – File system by
Microsoft with a particular focus on data resilience in server environments. •
ReiserFS – File system that uses
journaling •
Reiser4 – File system that uses
journaling, newest version of ReiserFS •
Reliance – Datalight's transactional file system for high reliability applications •
Reliance Nitro – Tree-based transactional,
copy-on-write file system developed for high-performance embedded systems, from Datalight (Acquired by
Tuxera in 2019) •
RFS – Native filesystem for
RTEMS •
SkyFS – Developed for
SkyOS to replace BFS as the operating system's main file system. It is based on BFS, but contains many new features. •
SFS – Smart File System,
journaling file system available for the Amiga platforms. •
Soup (Apple) – the "file system" for
Apple Newton Platform, structured as a shallow database •
Tux3 – An experimental versioning file system intended as a replacement for ext3 •
UDF – Packet-based file system for WORM/RW media such as CD-RW and DVD, now supports hard drives and flash memory as well. •
UFS – Unix File System, used on
Solaris and older
BSD systems •
UFS2 – Unix File System, used on newer
BSD systems •
VxFS Veritas file system, first commercial
journaling file system;
HP-UX,
Solaris,
Linux,
AIX,
UnixWare •
VTOC (Volume Table Of Contents) - Data structure on IBM mainframe
direct-access storage devices (DASD) such as disk drives that provides a way of locating the data sets that reside on the
DASD volume. •
XFS – Used on
SGI IRIX and
Linux systems •
zFS –
z/OS File System; not to be confused with other file systems named zFS or ZFS. •
zFS - an IBM research project to develop a distributed, decentralized file system; not to be confused with other file systems named zFS or ZFS. •
ZFS a combined file system and logical volume manager designed by
Sun Microsystems File systems with built-in fault-tolerance These file systems have built-in checksumming and either mirroring or parity for extra redundancy on one or several block devices: •
Bcachefs – Full data and metadata checksumming,
bcache is the bottom half of the filesystem. •
Btrfs – A file system based on
B-Trees, initially designed at
Oracle Corporation. •
HAMMER and
HAMMER2 –
DragonFly BSD's primary filesystems, created by
Matt Dillon. •
APFS – Apple File System is a next-generation file system for Apple products. •
CHFS – a
NetBSD filesystem for
embedded systems optimised for raw flash media. •
exFAT –
Microsoft file system intended for flash cards (see also
XCFiles, an exFAT implementation for
Wind River VxWorks and other embedded operating systems). Does not support TRIM on Windows. Supports TRIM on Linux. •
ExtremeFFS – internal filesystem for SSDs. •
F2FS – Flash-Friendly File System. An open source Linux file system introduced by
Samsung in 2012. •
FFS2 (presumably preceded by FFS1), one of the earliest flash file systems. Developed and patented by
Microsoft in the early 1990s. •
JFFS – original log structured Linux file system for NOR flash media. •
JFFS2 – successor of JFFS, for
NAND and
NOR flash. •
LSFS – a
Log-structured file system with writable snapshots and inline data deduplication created by
StarWind Software. Uses DRAM and flash to cache spinning disks. •
LogFS – intended to replace JFFS2, better scalability. No longer under active development. •
NILFS – a log-structured file system for Linux with continuous snapshots. •
Non-Volatile File System – the system for
flash memory introduced by
Palm, Inc. •
NOVA – the "non-volatile memory accelerated" file system for persistent main memory. •
OneFS – a filesystem utilized by
Isilon. It supports selective placement of meta-data directly onto flash SSD. • Reliance Velocity - a proprietary flash file system by
Tuxera with high resilience (fail-safe technology) and built-in data integrity. This file system is best suited for embedded applications requiring heavy data workloads over long-term operations. Reliance Velocity can used for all block based media like
eMMC,
UFS, eSD,
SD card,
CF card, and
SSD. It is compatible for
Linux,
Android and
QNX with portability to other embedded operating systems. • Reliance Edge - a proprietary file system by
Tuxera for resource-constrained embedded systems. It has built-in
data integrity with
copy-on-write transactional technology and
deterministic operations. This file system can be used for block based media and is configurable for Small
POSIX, Full POSIX and can be ported to many
RTOS environments. Tuxera has a certified version of this file system called Reliance Assure. The source code of Reliance Assure is complaint to
MISRA C and developed following the
ASPICE framework. •
Segger Microcontroller Systems emFile – filesystem for deeply embedded applications which supports both NAND and NOR flash. Wear leveling, fast read and write, and very low RAM usage. •
SPIFFS – SPI Flash File System, a wear-leveling filesystem intended for small NOR flash devices. •
TFAT – a transactional version of the FAT filesystem. •
TrueFFS – internal file system for SSDs, implementing error correction, bad block re-mapping and wear-leveling. •
UBIFS – successor of JFFS2, optimized to utilize
NAND and
NOR flash. •
Write Anywhere File Layout (WAFL) – an internal
journaling file system utilized by
NetApp within their DataONTAP OS, originally designed to use hard disk drives. WAFL uses
RAID-DP to protect against multiple disk failures and non-volatile DRAM (NVRAM) for
transaction logging of file system changes. •
YAFFS – a log-structured file system designed for NAND flash, but also used with NOR flash. • LittleFS – a little fail-safe filesystem designed for microcontrollers. •
JesFS – Jo's embedded serial FileSystem. A very small footprint and robust filesystem, designed for very small microcontroller (16/32 bit). Open Source and licensed under GPL v3.
File systems not directly advertised as flash friendly but that support TRIM in major implementations •
Btrfs (Linux) •
Ext2,
Ext3,
Ext4 (Linux) •
NTFS (Windows and Linux
NTFS-3G) •
ReFS (Windows)
Record-oriented file systems In
record-oriented file systems files are stored as a collection of
records. They are typically associated with
mainframe and
minicomputer operating systems. Programs read and write whole records, rather than bytes or arbitrary byte ranges, and can seek to a record boundary but not within records. The more sophisticated record-oriented file systems have more in common with simple
databases than with other file systems. •
CMS file system – The native file system of the
Conversational Monitor System component of
VM/370 •
Files-11 – early versions were record-oriented; support for "streams" was added later •
Michigan Terminal System (MTS) – provides "line files" where record lengths and line numbers are associated as metadata with each record in the file, lines can be added, replaced, updated with the same or different length records, and deleted anywhere in the file without the need to read and rewrite the entire file. •
OS4000 for GEC's OS4000 operating system, on the
GEC 4000 series minicomputers • A
FAT12 and
FAT16 (and
FAT32) extension to support database-like file types
random file,
direct file,
keyed file and
sequential file in Digital Research
FlexOS, IBM
4680 OS and Toshiba
4690 OS. The record size is stored on a file-by-file basis in
special entries in the directory table. • Sequential access methods for IBM's
z/OS and
z/VSE mainframe operating systems:
Basic Sequential Access Method (BSAM),
Basic Partitioned Access Method (BPAM) and
Queued Sequential Access Method (QSAM); see
Access methods and
Data set (IBM mainframe) for more examples •
Pick Operating System – A record-oriented filesystem and database that uses hash-coding to store data. •
Shared File System (SFS) for IBM's
VM •
Virtual Storage Access Method (VSAM) for IBM's
z/OS and
z/VSE mainframe operating systems
Shared-disk file systems Shared-disk file systems (also called
shared-storage file systems,
SAN file system,
Clustered file system or even
cluster file systems) are primarily used in a
storage area network where all nodes directly access the
block storage where the file system is located. This makes it possible for nodes to fail without affecting access to the file system from the other nodes. Shared-disk file systems are normally used in a
high-availability cluster together with storage on hardware
RAID. Shared-disk file systems normally do not scale over 64 or 128 nodes. Shared-disk file systems may be
symmetric where
metadata is distributed among the nodes or
asymmetric with centralized
metadata servers. •
CXFS (Clustered XFS) from
Silicon Graphics (SGI). Available for Linux, Mac, Windows, Solaris, AIX and IRIX. Asymmetric. •
Dell Fluid File System (formerly ExaFS)
proprietary software sold by
Dell. Shared-disk system sold as an appliance providing distributed file systems to clients. Running on Intel based hardware serving NFS v2/v3, SMB/CIFS and AFP to
Windows,
macOS,
Linux and other
UNIX clients. •
Blue Whale Clustered file system (BWFS) from
Zhongke Blue Whale. Asymmetric. Available for
Microsoft Windows,
Linux, and
macOS. •
SAN File System (SFS) from DataPlow. Available for Windows, Linux, Solaris, and macOS. Symmetric and Asymmetric. •
EMC Celerra HighRoad from
EMC. Available for Linux, AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris and Windows. Asymmetric. •
Files-11 on
VMSclusters, released by
DEC in 1983, now from
HP. Symmetric. •
GFS2 (
Global File System) from
Red Hat. Available for Linux under
GPL. Symmetric (
GDLM) or Asymmetric (
GULM). •
IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS) Windows, Linux, AIX . Parallel •
Nasan Clustered File System from
DataPlow. Available for Linux and Solaris. Asymmetric. •
Oracle ACFS from
Oracle Corporation. Available for Linux (
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and
Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 only). Symmetric. •
OCFS2 (
Oracle Cluster File System) from
Oracle Corporation. Available for Linux under
GPL. Symmetric. •
QFS from
Sun Microsystems. Available for Linux (client only) and Solaris (metadata server and client). Asymmetric. •
ScoutFS from
Versity. Available for Linux under the
GPL. Symmetric. •
StorNext File System from
Quantum. Asymmetric. Available for
AIX,
HP-UX,
IRIX,
Linux,
macOS,
Solaris and
Windows. Interoperable with
Xsan. Formerly known as CVFS. •
Veritas Storage Foundation from
Symantec. Available for AIX, HP-UX, Linux and Solaris. Asymmetric. •
Xsan from
Apple Inc. Available for macOS. Asymmetric. Interoperable with
StorNext File System. •
VMFS from
VMware/
EMC Corporation. Available for
VMware ESX Server. Symmetric. == Distributed file systems ==