GPT(GUID Partition Table)

                                     GPT (GUID Partition Table)

GPT stands for GUID partition table. It’s replaces the old MBR partition process with something more modern. The GUID partition means every partition on your drive has a “globally Unique Identifier”.

GPT allows unlimited amount of partition and the limit here will be your operating system-Windows allows 128 partitions on a GPT drive and there is no need of creating extended partition. Its stores multiple copies of data across the disk.
                                                It’s robust and if data is corrupted it recover. A advance feature is that GPT have stores cyclic redundancy check (CRC) values that it’s data is recovered if the data is corrupted. If your hard disk get sign of data damaged or data corrupt it give sign to recover data on other disk location. GUID full form Globally Unique Identifiers (GUID).

Read More

MBR(Master Boot Recorder)

                                              MBR (Master Boot Record)

A master boot record (MBR) is a special type of boot sector it created at the beginning of partition of computer mass storage devices like removable drives intended use with IBM PC-compatible systems beyond. The concept of MBRs was publicly introduced in 1983.

The MBR holds the information on how the partition, containing file systems, are organized on that medium. The MBR code is usually referred to as a boot loader. MBRs are not present on non-partitioned media like floppies, super floppies or other storage device configured to behave as such.

Developer: IBM PC

Programmer writer: David Litton

Year: June 1982

Partition support: 4

One partition of MBR are reserved for DOS use. MBR always in the first sector of the computer hard drive that instruct our PC how to partition of hard drive & how to load the Operating system. MBR   works with disks up to 2 TB of size, more than the 2 TB space MBR doesn’t handle it. In MBR there is fixed partition level is 4 if you want to increase partition level you have to make one partition Extended partition and create a logical partition inside it.

                                              

Read More

NTFS(New Technology File System)

                                           NTFS (New Technology File System)

This file system is the standard file system of windows NT, including  all the latest version operating system like Windows 2000, Windows Xp, Windows server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows vista, and Windows 7.NTFS have several  improvements over FAT and HPFS(High Performance File system) such as improved version support for metadata(data about data) and there is use of advanced data structure to improve the  performances, reliability, and disk space utilization, plus addition extension such as security access control list(ACL) & File system journaling(FSJ).

Developer: Microsoft

Full name: New Technology File System

Launched: July 1993

Partition Format: MBR (Master Boot Recorder)

Max. File Size: 16 Exabyte’s

History

In the period of 1980’s, IBM & Microsoft had a joint project to create the new generation graphical OS (operating system). After sometimes the Project OS/2 was disagreed by both MICROSOFT & IBM on some important topics. The IBM continuously start working on OS/2 but Microsoft start on other project called Microsoft NT. When IBM have completed their OS/2 project it uses HPFS file system .Now, Microsoft also completed their project and work on NTFS file system both the IBM & Microsoft uses contained several new features.

Versions:

1.      V1.0 with OS NT 3.1 (developed in 1993)

2.      V1.1 with OS NT 3.5 (developed in 1994)

3.      V1.2 with OS NT 3.51 (developed in 1995)

4.      V3.0 with windows 2000

5.      V3.1 with Windows xp(2001)

6.      V5.1 with Windows Server 2003(2003)

7.      V5.2 with Windows Vista (2005)

8.      V6.0 with Windows Server 2008 ,Windows 7

Features:

1.      USN JOURNAL

2.      Alternate data streams(ADS)

3.      Spare files

4.      File Compression

5.      Volume Shadow Copy

6.      Transactional NTFS

7.      Encrypting File system(EFS)

8.      Quotas

9.      Re parse Points

10.  Volume Mount Points

11.  Directory Junctions

---

Read More

FAT(File Allocation Table)

                                  FAT (File Allocation Table)

FAT (File Allocation Table) Or FAT is a computer file system architecture now widely used on many computer systems and most Memory Cards.

We use with digital cameras, flash drive, Floppy disks and many portable devices because of its simplicity.

Performance:

Performance of FAT compares poorly to most other file systems as it uses overly simplistic data structure, making file operations time-consuming.

 It also makes poor use of disk space in situations where many small files are present.

History

The Fat file system was developed by Bill Grates & Marc McDonald during 1976-1977.

The FAT file system was created for managing disks in Microsoft Standalone Disk BASIC.

Types:

1. FAT12

2. FAT16

3. FAT32

                             

Here we all talk about newer version of FAT32 which was introduced by Microsoft with cluster (To limit the size of the table, disk space is allocated to files in contiguous groups of hardware sectors called clusters) values are in 32-bit field , in which 28-bits are used to hold the cluster number ,for maximum of approximately 268 clusters. This means it allows for drive of up to 8 terabytes with 32KB clusters. The boot sector uses a 32-bit filed for the sector count limiting size of volume to 2 TB on your hard disk with 512 byte sector.
The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GB minus 1 byte (2³²−1 bytes). Video applications, large databases, and some other software easily exceed this limit. Larger files require another formatting type such as NTFS.

FAT 32 Can be converted to NTFS .If there is more than one operating system then it will be better to convert some volume to FAT32.Use of multiple operating system on same hard disk would make FAT32 a better choice .
FAT32 doesn’t have
-- File level encryption.
-- Sparse file support.
-- Disk usage Quotas.
-- Distributed link tracing.
-- File Compression.
-- Hierarchical storage Management.

References:-
FAT(File Allocation System)

Read More