Comparison of file systems

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of computer file systems.

General information

More information File system, Creator ...
File system Creator Year of introduction Original operating system
DECtape DEC 1964 PDP-6 Monitor
OS/3x0 FS IBM 1964 OS/360
Level-D DEC 1968 TOPS-10
George 3 ICT (later ICL) 1968 George 3
Version 6 Unix file system (V6FS) Bell Labs 1972 Version 6 Unix
RT-11 file system DEC 1973 RT-11
Disk Operating System (GEC DOS) GEC 1973 Core Operating System
CP/M file system Digital Research (Gary Kildall) 1974 CP/M[1][2]
Files-11 ODS-1 DEC 1975 RSX-11
GEC DOS filing system extended GEC 1977 OS4000
FAT (8-bit) Microsoft (Marc McDonald) for NCR 1977 Microsoft Standalone Disk BASIC-80 (later Microsoft Standalone Disk BASIC-86)
DOS 3.x Apple 1978 Apple DOS
UCSD p-System UCSD 1978 UCSD p-System
CBM DOS Commodore 1978 Commodore BASIC
Atari DOS Atari 1979 Atari 8-bit
Version 7 Unix file system (V7FS) Bell Labs 1979 Version 7 Unix
Files-11 ODS-2 DEC 1979 OpenVMS
FAT12 Seattle Computer Products (Tim Paterson) 1980 QDOS/86-DOS (later IBM PC DOS 1.0)
ProDOS Apple 1980 Apple SOS (later ProDOS 8)
DFS Acorn Computers Ltd 1982 Acorn BBC Micro MOS
ADFS Acorn Computers Ltd 1983 Acorn Electron (later Arthur/RISC OS)
FFS Kirk McKusick 1983 4.2BSD
FAT16 IBM, Microsoft 1984 PC DOS 3.0, MS-DOS 3.0
MFS Apple 1984 System 1
Elektronika BK tape format NPO "Scientific centre" (now Sitronics) 1985 Vilnius Basic, BK monitor program
HFS Apple 1985 System 2.1
Amiga OFS Metacomco for Commodore 1985 Amiga OS
GEMDOS Digital Research 1985 Atari TOS
NWFS Novell 1985 NetWare 286
High Sierra Ecma International 1986 MSCDEX for MS-DOS 3.1/3.2[3]
FAT16B Compaq 1987 Compaq MS-DOS 3.31
Minix V1 FS Andrew S. Tanenbaum 1987 MINIX 1.0
Amiga FFS Commodore 1988 Amiga OS 1.3
ISO 9660:1988 Ecma International, ISO 1988 MS-DOS, "classic" Mac OS, and AmigaOS
HPFS IBM & Microsoft 1989 OS/2 1.2
ISO 9660: Rock Ridge extension IEEE 1990 c. 1990 Unix
JFS1 IBM 1990 AIX[a]
VxFS VERITAS 1991 SVR4.0
ext Rémy Card 1992 Linux
AdvFS DEC 1993[4] Digital Unix
NTFS Microsoft (Gary Kimura, Tom Miller) 1993 Windows NT 3.1
LFS Margo Seltzer 1993 Berkeley Sprite
ext2 Rémy Card 1993 Linux, Hurd
Xiafs Q. Frank Xia 1993 Linux
UFS1 Kirk McKusick 1994 4.4BSD
XFS SGI 1994 IRIX
HFS IBM 1994 MVS/ESA (now z/OS)
FAT16X Microsoft 1995 MS-DOS 7.0 / Windows 95
ISO 9660: Joliet extension Microsoft 1995 Microsoft Windows, Linux, "classic" Mac OS, and FreeBSD
UDF ISO/ECMA/OSTA 1995 N/a
FAT32, FAT32X Microsoft 1996 MS-DOS 7.1 / Windows 95 OSR2[b]
QFS Sun Microsystems 1996 Solaris
GPFS IBM 1996 AIX, Linux
Be File System Be Inc. (D. Giampaolo, Cyril Meurillon) 1996 BeOS
Minix V2 FS Andrew S. Tanenbaum 1997 MINIX 2.0
HFS Plus Apple 1998 Mac OS 8.1
NSS Novell 1998 NetWare 5
PolyServe File System (PSFS) PolyServe 1998 Windows, Linux
Files-11 ODS-5 DEC 1998 OpenVMS V7.2
WAFL NetApp 1998 Data ONTAP
ext3 Stephen Tweedie 1999 Linux
ISO 9660:1999 Ecma International, ISO 1999 Microsoft Windows, Linux, "classic" Mac OS, FreeBSD, and AmigaOS
JFS IBM 1999 OS/2 Warp Server for e-business
GFS Sistina (Red Hat) 2000 Linux
ReiserFS Namesys 2001 Linux
zFS IBM 2001 z/OS (backported to OS/390)
FATX Microsoft 2002 Xbox
UFS2 Kirk McKusick 2002 FreeBSD 5.0
OCFS Oracle Corporation 2002 Linux
SquashFS Phillip Lougher, Robert Lougher 2002 Linux
VMFS2 VMware 2002 VMware ESX Server 2.0
Lustre Cluster File Systems[5] 2002 Linux
Fossil Bell Labs 2003 Plan 9 version 4
Google File System Google 2003 Linux
ZFS Sun Microsystems 2004 Solaris
Reiser4 Namesys 2004 Linux
Non-Volatile File System Palm, Inc. 2004 Palm OS Garnet
BeeGFS Fraunhofer/ ThinkParQ 2005 Linux
GlusterFS Gluster Inc. 2005 Linux
Minix V3 FS Andrew S. Tanenbaum 2005 MINIX 3
OCFS2 Oracle Corporation 2005 Linux
NILFS NTT 2005 Linux
VMFS3 VMware 2005 VMware ESX Server 3.0
GFS2 Red Hat 2006 Linux
ext4 various 2006 Linux
exFAT Microsoft 2006 Windows CE 6.0
Btrfs Chris Mason 2007 Linux
JXFS Hyperion Entertainment 2008 AmigaOS 4.1
HAMMER Matthew Dillon 2008 DragonFly BSD 2.0
LSFS StarWind Software 2009 Linux, FreeBSD, Windows
UniFS Nasuni 2009 Cloud
CASL Nimble Storage 2010 Linux
OrangeFS Omnibond and others 2011 Linux
VMFS5 VMware 2011 vSphere 5.0+
CHFS University of Szeged 2011 NetBSD 6.0+
ReFS Microsoft 2012 Windows Server 2012
F2FS Samsung Electronics 2012 Linux
bcachefs Kent Overstreet 2015 Linux
APFS Apple 2016 macOS High Sierra, iOS 10.3
NOVA University of California, San Diego 2017 Linux
BlueStore/CephFS Red Hat, UC, Santa Cruz 2017 Linux
HAMMER2 Matthew Dillon[6] 2017 DragonFly BSD 5.0
EROFS Huawei[7] 2018 Linux, Android
VaultFS Swiss Vault 2022 Linux / Unix
Close

Metadata

More information File system, Stores file owner ...
File system
Stores file owner
POSIX
file permissions
Creation timestamps
Last access/
read timestamps
Last metadata change
timestamps
Last archive
timestamps
Security/
MAC labels
Metadata checksum/
ECC
bcachefs Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
BeeGFS Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes ? Yes Yes
CP/M file system No No Yes[c] No No No No No No No
DECtape[8] No No Yes No No No No No No No
Elektronika BK tape format No No No No No No No No No Yes
Level-D Yes Yes Yes Yes (date only) Yes Yes Yes (FILDAE) No No No
RT-11[9] No No Yes (date only) No No No No No No Yes
Version 6 Unix file system (V6FS)[10] Yes Yes No Yes No No No No No No
Version 7 Unix file system (V7FS)[11] Yes Yes No Yes No No No No No No
exFAT No No Yes Yes No No No No No No
FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 No No Yes Yes No[d] No No No No[e] No
HPFS Yes[f] No Yes Yes No No No ? Yes No
NTFS Yes Yes[g] Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes[h] Yes No
ReFS Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes ? Yes[i] Yes
HFS No No Yes No No Yes No No Yes No
HFS Plus Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? Yes No
FFS Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No No No No
UFS1 Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes[j] Yes[j] No[k] No
UFS2 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes[j] Yes[j] Yes Partial
HAMMER Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? Yes Yes No Yes
HAMMER2 Yes Yes ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
LFS Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No No No No
EROFS Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes Yes Yes No
ext Yes Yes No No No No No No No No
Xiafs Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No No No No
ext2 Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes[l] Yes[l] Yes No
ext3 Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes[l] Yes[l] Yes No
ext4 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes[l] Yes[l] Yes Partial[m]
NOVA Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No Yes
Lustre Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No
F2FS Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes[l] Yes[l] Yes No
GPFS Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
GFS Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes[l] Yes[l] Yes No
NILFS Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No No No Yes
ReiserFS Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes[l] Yes[l] Yes No
Reiser4 Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No No No No
OCFS No Yes No No Yes Yes No No No No
OCFS2 Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No No No No
XFS Yes Yes Yes[n] Yes Yes No Yes Yes[l] Yes Yes
JFS Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No
QFS Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No
BFS Yes Yes Yes No No No No No Yes No
AdvFS Yes Yes No Yes Yes No Yes No Yes No
NSS Yes Yes Yes[o] Yes[o] Yes Yes[o] Yes ? Yes[p][q] No
NWFS Yes ? Yes[o] Yes[o] Yes Yes[o] Yes ? Yes[p][q] No
Files-11 ODS-1[15] Yes Yes Yes No No No No No Yes[r] No
Files-11 ODS-2[16] Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes ? Yes[r] No
Files-11 ODS-5 Yes Yes Yes ? ? Yes Yes ? Yes[r] No
APFS Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
VxFS Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes ? Yes[l] No
UDF Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Fossil Yes Yes[s] No Yes Yes No No No No No
ZFS Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes[t] Yes[u] Yes
Btrfs Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Minix V1 Yes Yes No No No No No No No No
Minix V2 Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No No No No
Minix V3 Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No No No No
VMFS2 Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No No No No
VMFS3 Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No No No No
ISO 9660:1988 No No Yes No No No No No No No
ISO 9660: Rock Ridge extension Yes Yes No Yes[v] Yes No No[w] No[x] No[x] No
ISO 9660: Joliet extension No No Yes No No No No No No No
ISO 9660:1999 No No Yes No No No No No No No
High Sierra No No Yes No No No No No No No
SquashFS Yes Yes No No Yes No No Yes Yes No
BlueStore/CephFS Yes Yes Yes Yes ? No Yes Yes Yes Yes
File system
Stores file owner
POSIX
file permissions
Creation timestamps
Last access/
read timestamps
Last metadata change
timestamps
Last archive
timestamps
Security/
MAC labels
Metadata checksum/
ECC
Close

All widely used file systems record a last modified time stamp (also known as "mtime"). It is not included in the table.

Individual file systems may record additional special types of date and time stamps. For example, the specification of ISO 9660 includes a "File Expiration Date and Time" and a "File Effective Date and Time".[17]

Features

File capabilities

More information File system, Hard links ...
File system Hard links Symbolic links Block journaling Metadata-only journaling Case-sensitive Case-preserving File Change Log XIP
DECtape No No No No No No No No
BeeGFS No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No
Level-D No No No No No No No No
RT-11 No No No No No No No No
APFS Yes Yes ? ? Optional[y] Yes ? ?
Version 6 Unix file system (V6FS) Yes No No No Yes Yes No No
Version 7 Unix file system (V7FS) Yes No[z] No No Yes Yes No No
exFAT No No No Partial (with TexFAT only) No Yes No No
FAT12 No No No Partial (with TFAT12 only) No Partial (with VFAT LFNs only) No No
FAT16 / FAT16B / FAT16X No No No Partial (with TFAT16 only) No Partial (with VFAT LFNs only) No No
FAT32 / FAT32X No No No? Partial (with TFAT32 only) No Partial (with VFAT LFNs only) No No
GFS Yes Yes[aa] Yes Yes[ab] Yes Yes No No
HPFS No No No No No Yes No No
NTFS Yes Yes[ac] No[ad] Yes[ad] (2000) Yes[ae] Yes Yes ?
HFS Plus Yes[19] Yes No Yes[af] Optional[ag] Yes Yes[ah] No
FFS Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No No
UFS1 Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No No
UFS2 Yes Yes No Yes[ai] [24] [aj] Yes Yes No ?
HAMMER Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? No
HAMMER2 Yes Yes ? ? ? ? ? ?
LFS Yes Yes Yes[ak] No Yes Yes No No
EROFS Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No No
ext Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No No
Xiafs Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No No
ext2 Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No Yes[al]
ext3 Yes Yes Yes (2001) [am] Yes (2001) Yes Yes No Yes
ext4 Yes Yes Yes[am] Yes Yes, optional [27] Yes No Yes
NOVA Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No Yes
F2FS Yes Yes Yes[ak] No Yes Yes No No
Lustre Yes Yes Yes[am] Yes Yes Yes Yes No
NILFS Yes Yes Yes[ak] No Yes Yes No No
ReiserFS Yes Yes Yes[an] Yes Yes Yes No ?
Reiser4 Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No ?
OCFS No Yes No No Yes Yes No No
OCFS2 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No
XFS Yes Yes Yes[am] Yes Yes[ao] Yes Yes ?
JFS Yes Yes Yes Yes (1990) Yes[ap] Yes No ?
QFS Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No No
BFS Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes ? No
NSS Yes Yes ? Yes Yes[aq] Yes[aq] Yes[ar] No
NWFS Yes[as] Yes[as] No No Yes[aq] Yes[aq] Yes[ar] No
Files-11 ODS-1[15] Yes No No No No No No No
Files-11 ODS-2 [16] Yes Yes[at] No Yes No No Yes No
Files-11 ODS-5 Yes Yes[at] No Yes No Yes Yes ?
UDF Yes Yes Yes[ak] Yes[ak] Yes Yes No Yes
VxFS Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes ?
Fossil No No No No Yes Yes Yes No
ZFS Yes Yes Yes[au] No[au] Yes Yes No No
Btrfs Yes Yes Yes[av] No Yes Yes ? ?
bcachefs Yes Yes Yes[aw] No Yes, optional [29] Yes ? ?
Minix V1 Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No No
Minix V2 Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No No
Minix V3 Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No No
VMFS2 Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No No
VMFS3 Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes No No
ReFS Yes[ax] Yes ? ? Yes[ae] Yes ? ?
ISO 9660 No No No No No No No No
ISO 9660: Rock Ridge extension Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No No
ISO 9660: Joliet extension No No No No No Yes No No
SquashFS Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No No
BlueStore/CephFS Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No
File system Hard links Symbolic links Block journaling Metadata-only journaling Case-sensitive Case-preserving File Change Log XIP
Close

Block capabilities

Note that in addition to the below table, block capabilities can be implemented below the file system layer in Linux (LVM, integritysetup, cryptsetup) or Windows (Volume Shadow Copy Service, SECURITY), etc.

More information File system, Internal snapshotting / branching ...
File system Internal snapshotting / branching Encryption Deduplication Data checksum/ ECC Persistent Cache Multiple Devices Compression Self-healing[ay]
DECtape No No No No No No No No
BeeGFS No No Yes No No No Yes No
Level-D No No No No No No No No
RT-11 No No No No No No No No
APFS Yes Yes Yes [30] No No No Yes No
Version 6 Unix file system (V6FS) No No No No No No No No
Version 7 Unix file system (V7FS) No No No No No No No No
exFAT No No No No No No No No
FAT12 No No No No No No Partial[az] No
FAT16 / FAT16B / FAT16X No No No No No No Partial[az] No
FAT32 / FAT32X No No No No No No No No
GFS No No ? No No No No No
HPFS ? No ? No No No No No
NTFS No Yes Yes[ba][32] No No No Yes No
HFS Plus No No[bb] No No No No No No
FFS No No No No No No No No
UFS1 No No No No No No No No
UFS2 Yes No No No No No No No
HAMMER Yes No Yes Yes No No No No
HAMMER2 Yes ? Yes Yes ? ? Yes Pending
LFS Yes No No No No No No No
EROFS No No Yes No No Yes Yes No
ext No No No No No No No No
Xiafs No No No No No No No No
ext2 No No No No No No No No
ext3 No No No No No No No No
ext4 No Yes, experimental [33] No No[34] No No No No
NOVA Yes No No Yes No No No ?
F2FS No Yes, experimental [35] No No No No Yes No
Lustre No No No No Yes Yes No No
NILFS Yes, continuous[ak] No No Yes No No No No
ReiserFS No No No No No No No No
Reiser4 ? Yes[bc] ? No No No Yes No
OCFS No No No No No No No No
OCFS2 No No No No No No No No
XFS No No Yes[36] No[34] No No No No
JFS ? No ? No No No only in JFS1 on AIX[37] No
QFS No No No No No No No No
BFS No No No No No No No No
NSS Yes Yes ? No No No Yes No
NWFS ? No ? No No No Yes No
Files-11 ODS-2 Yes No No No No No No No
Files-11 ODS-5 Yes No No No No No No ?
UDF No No No No No No No No
VxFS Yes[bd] No Yes No No No No No
Fossil Yes No Yes No No No Yes No
ZFS Yes Yes[be] Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes[bf] Yes
Btrfs Yes No Yes Yes[bg] No Yes Yes[bh] Yes
bcachefs Yes Yes No Yes[bi] Yes[43] Yes Yes[bj] Yes[bk]
Minix V1 No No No No No No No No
Minix V2 No No No No No No No No
Minix V3 No No No No No No No No
VMFS2 No No No No No No No No
VMFS3 No No No No No No No No
ReFS Yes[bl] No Yes No[bm] No No No[bn] No[bm]
ISO 9660 No No No[bo] No No No No No
ISO 9660: Rock Ridge extension No No No[bo] No No No No No
ISO 9660: Joliet extension No No No[bo] No No No No No
SquashFS No No Yes Yes No No Yes No
BlueStore/CephFS Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
File system Internal snapshotting / branching Encryption Deduplication Data checksum/ ECC Persistent Cache Multiple Devices Compression Self-healing[ay]
Close

Resize capabilities

"Online" and "offline" are synonymous with "mounted" and "not mounted".

More information File system, Host OS ...
File system Host OS Offline grow Online grow Offline shrink Online shrink Add and remove physical volumes
exFAT misc. No No No No No
FAT16 / FAT16B / FAT16X misc. Yes[bp] No Yes[bp] No No
FAT32 / FAT32X misc. Yes[bp] No Yes[bp] No No
NTFS Windows Yes Yes Yes Yes No
ReFS Windows ? Yes ? No No
HFS macOS No No No No No
HFS Plus macOS No Yes No Yes No
APFS macOS ? Yes ? Yes ?
HAMMER DragonflyBSD ? ? ? ? ?
EROFS Linux Yes No No No Yes
ext2[48] Linux Yes No Yes No No
ext3[48] Linux Yes Yes Yes No No
ext4[48] Linux Yes Yes Yes No No
NOVA Linux No No No No No
F2FS[49] Linux Yes No No No No
Lustre[50] Linux ? Yes No No Yes
XFS[51] Linux No Yes No[52] No[52] No
JFS2 AIX Yes Yes Yes Yes No
JFS[53] Linux Yes No No No No
NTFS[54] Linux Yes No Yes No No
ReiserFS[55] Linux Yes Yes Yes No No
Reiser4[56] Linux Yes Yes Yes No No
Btrfs[57] Linux Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
bcachefs[43] Linux Yes Yes No No Yes
NILFS[58] Linux No Yes No Yes No
ZFS misc. No Yes No Yes Partial[59]
UFS2[60] FreeBSD Yes Yes (FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE or later) No No No
SquashFS Linux No No No No No
BlueStore/CephFS Linux No Yes No Yes Yes
Close

Allocation and layout policies

More information File system, Sparse files ...
File system Sparse files Block suballocation Tail packing Extents Variable block size[bq] Inline data (resident files) Allocate-on-flush Copy on write Trim support
DECtape No No No No No ? No No No
BeeGFS Yes No No Yes Yes ? Yes Yes ?
Level-D No No No Yes No ? No No ?
APFS Yes ? ? Yes ? ? Yes Yes Yes[61][62]
Version 6 Unix file system (V6FS) Yes No No No No No No ? No
Version 7 Unix file system (V7FS) Yes No No No No No No ? No
exFAT No No No Partial (only if the file fits into one contiguous block range) No No No No Yes (Linux)
FAT12 Partial (only inside of compressed volumes)[63] Partial (only inside of Stacker 3/4 and DriveSpace 3 compressed volumes[31]) No Partial (only inside of compressed volumes)[64] No No No No Yes (Linux)
FAT16 / FAT16B / FAT16X Partial (only inside of compressed volumes)[63] Partial (only inside of Stacker 3/4 and DriveSpace 3 compressed volumes[31]) No Partial (only inside of compressed volumes)[64] No No No No Yes (Linux)
FAT32 / FAT32X No No No No No No No No Yes (Linux)
GFS Yes No Partial[br] No No ? No ? Yes
HPFS No No No Yes No ? No ? Yes (Linux)
NTFS Yes Partial No Yes No Yes (approximately 700 bytes) No ? Yes (NT 6.1+; Linux)
HFS Plus No No No Yes No ? No ? Yes (macOS)
FFS Yes 8:1[bs] No No No No No ? No
UFS1 Yes 8:1[bs] No No No No No ? No
UFS2 Yes 8:1[bs] No No Read-only so far No No ? Yes[65][66]
HAMMER ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Yes ?
HAMMER2 ? ? ? ? ? Yes ? Yes ?
LFS Yes 8:1[bs] No No No ? No Yes ?
EROFS Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes No No No
ext Yes No No No No ? No No No
Xiafs Yes No No No No ? No ? ?
ext2 Yes No[bt] No No No ? No No Yes
ext3 Yes No[bt] No No No ? No No Yes
ext4 Yes No[bt] No Yes No Yes (inode size - 96B)[67] Yes No Yes
NOVA Yes No No Yes No ? No Yes ?
F2FS Yes No No Partial[bu] No Yes (approximately 3.4KB)[68] Yes Yes Yes[69]
Lustre Yes No No Yes No ? Yes ? ?
NILFS Yes No No No No ? Yes Yes Yes (Linux NILFS2)
ReiserFS Yes Yes[bv] Yes No No No No ? ?
Reiser4 Yes Yes[bv] Yes Yes[bw] No No Yes ? Testing[70]
OCFS ? No No Yes No ? No ? ?
OCFS2 Yes No No Yes No Yes No ? Yes (Linux)
XFS Yes No No Yes No No (not accepted)[71] Yes Yes, on request[72] Yes (Linux)
JFS Yes Yes No Yes No Yes (256 bytes)[bx] No ? Yes (Linux)
QFS ? Yes No No No ? No ? ?
BFS ? No No Yes No ? No ? Yes (Haiku)
NSS ? No No Yes No ? Yes ? ?
NWFS ? Yes[by] No No No ? No ? ?
Files-11 ODS-5 ? No No Yes No No No ? ?
VxFS Yes ? No Yes No ? No ? ?
UDF Yes No No Yes No Yes[73] Depends on implementation. Yes, for write once read many media No
Fossil ? No No No No ? No ? ?
ZFS Yes Yes No No Yes Yes (112 bytes)[74] Yes Yes Yes
Btrfs Yes Yes No[75] Yes Yes Yes (2 KiB)[75] Yes Yes Yes
bcachefs Yes Yes[bz] Yes[ca] Yes No Yes (half block size)[43] Yes Yes Yes[43]
VMFS2 Yes Yes No No No ? No ? ?
VMFS3 Yes Yes No No No ? No ? ?
ReFS Yes ? ? ? No ? ? Yes Yes (NT 6.1+)
ISO 9660 No No No ISO 9660 Level 3 only No ? No No No
ISO 9660: Rock Ridge extension No No No extended from ISO 9660 No ? No No No
ISO 9660: Joliet extension No No No extended from ISO 9660 No ? No No No
SquashFS Yes No Yes No No ? No No No
BlueStore/CephFS Yes ? ? ? ? ? No Yes Yes
File system Sparse files Block suballocation Tail packing Extents Variable block size[bq] Inline data (resident files) Allocate-on-flush Copy on write Trim support
Close

OS support

More information File system, DOS ...
File system DOS Linux macOS Windows 9x (historic) Windows (current) Classic
Mac OS		 FreeBSD OS/2 BeOS Minix Solaris z/OS Android[76]
DECtape No No No No No No No No No No No No No
BeeGFS No Yes ? No No No No No ? ? ? No No
Level-D No ? ? No No No No No No No ? ? No
RT-11 No No No No No No No No No No No No No
APFS No Partial (read-only with apfs-fuse[77] or linux-apfs[78]) Yes
(Since macOS Sierra)		 No No No No No No No No No No
Version 6 Unix file system (V6FS) No ? No No No No No No No No No No No
Version 7 Unix file system (V7FS) No Yes No No No No No No ? ? ? No No
exFAT No Yes (since 5.4,[79] available as a kernel module or FUSE driver for earlier versions) Yes No Yes No Yes (available as a FUSE driver) No No No Yes (available as a FUSE driver) No With kernel 5.10
FAT12 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Partial (via dosdir, dosread, doswrite) Yes ? Yes
FAT16 / FAT16B / FAT16X Yes (FAT16 from DOS 3.0, FAT16B from DOS 3.31, FAT16X from DOS 7.0) Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Partial (via dosdir, dosread, doswrite, not FAT16X) Yes ? Yes
FAT32 / FAT32X Yes[b] Yes Yes Yes[b] Yes ? Yes Yes Yes No Yes ? Yes
GFS No Yes ? No No No No ? ? ? ? ? No
HPFS Partial (with third-party drivers) Yes ? No No ? Yes Yes (from OS/2 1.2) ? No ? ? No
NTFS Needs 3rd-party drivers Yes Native since Linux Kernel 5.15 NTFS3. Older kernels may use backported NTFS3 driver or ntfs-3g[80] Read only, write support needs Paragon NTFS or ntfs-3g Needs 3rd-party drivers like Paragon NTFS for Win98, DiskInternals NTFS Reader Yes No Yes with ntfs-3g ? Yes with ntfs-3g No Yes with ntfs-3g ? With third party tools
HFS No Yes No write support since Mac OS X 10.6 and no support at all since macOS 10.15 No Needs Paragon HFS+ [81] Yes No ? Yes No ? No No
HFS Plus No Partial - writing support only to unjournalled FS Yes No Needs Paragon HFS+ [81] Yes from Mac OS 8.1 No ? with addon No ? No No
FFS No ? Yes No ? ? Yes ? ? ? ? ? No
UFS1 No Partial - read only Yes No Partial (with ufs2tools, read only) ? Yes No ? ? Yes ? No
UFS2 No Yes Yes No Partial (with ufs2tools, read only) ? Yes No ? ? ? ? No
LFS No ? ? No No ? No No ? ? ? ? No
EROFS No Yes Needs - since erofs-utils 1.4 No No No No No No No No No Yes
ext No Yes - until 2.1.20 No No No No No No No No No No No
Xiafs No Yes - until 2.1.20

Experimental port available to 2.6.32 and later [82][83]

 No No No No No No No No No No No
ext2 No Yes Needs Paragon ExtFS [84] or ext2fsx Partial (read-only, with explore2fs)[85] Needs Paragon ExtFS [86] or partial with Ext2 IFS[87] or ext2fsd[88] No Yes No Yes ? ? ? No
ext3 No Yes Needs Paragon ExtFS [84] or partial with ext2fsx (journal not updated on writing) Partial (read-only, with explore2fs)[85] Needs Paragon ExtFS [86] or partial with Ext2 IFS[87] or ext2fsd[88] Partial (read only)[citation needed] Yes[89] No with addon ? Yes ? Yes
ext4 No Yes Needs Paragon ExtFS [84] No Yes, with the optional WSL2; physical and VHDX virtual disks.[90][91] ? Yes since FreeBSD 12.0[89] No with addon ? ? ? Yes
NOVA No Yes No No No No No No No No No No No
F2FS No Yes No No No No No No No No No No Yes
Lustre No Yes[92] ? No No ? No ? ? ? Yes ? No
NILFS No Yes as an external kernel module ? No ? ? No ? ? ? ? ? No
ReiserFS No Yes - until 6.13 ? No No ? Partial - Read Only from 6.0 to 10.x[93] and dropped in 11.0[94][95] ? with addon ? ? ? No
Reiser4 No Yes with a kernel patch ? No No ? No ? ? ? ? ? No
SpadFS No Yes No No No No ? No No No No No No
OCFS No Yes ? No No ? No No ? ? ? ? No
OCFS2 No Yes ? No No ? No No ? ? ? ? No
XFS No Yes ? No No ? Partial ? with addon (read only) ? ? ? No
JFS No Yes ? No No ? No Yes ? ? ? ? No
QFS No Client[96] ? No No ? No No ? ? Yes ? No
Be File System No Partial - read-only ? No No ? No No Yes ? ? ? No
NSS No Yes via EVMS[cb] ? No No ? No No ? ? ? ? No
NWFS Partial (with Novell drivers) ? ? No No ? Yes No ? ? ? ? No
Files-11 ODS-2 No ? ? No No ? No No ? ? ? ? No
Files-11 ODS-5 No ? ? No No ? No No ? ? ? ? No
UDF No Yes Yes ? Yes ? Yes ? ? ? Yes ? No
VxFS No Yes ? No No ? No No ? ? Yes ? No
Fossil No Yes[cc] Yes[cc] No No No Yes[cc] No No No Yes[cc] ? No
ZFS No Yes with FUSE[97] or as an external kernel module[98] Yes with Read/Write Developer Preview[99] No With third-party software (OpenZFS).[100] No Yes No No No Yes No No
Btrfs No Yes ? No Yes with WinBtrfs[101] ? No ? ? ? ? ? No
bcachefs No Yes No No No No No No No No No No No
VMFS2 No ? ? No No ? No No ? ? ? ? No
VMFS3 No ? ? No No ? No No ? ? ? ? No
IBM HFS No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No
IBM zFS No No No No No No No No No No No Yes No
ReFS No Needs Paragon ReFS for Linux ? No Yes ? ? ? ? ? ? ? No
ISO 9660 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
ISO 9660: Rock Ridge extension No Yes Yes No No No Yes No No Yes Yes ? No
ISO 9660: Joliet extension No Yes Yes Yes Yes ? Yes Yes Yes ? Yes ? No
SquashFS No Yes Partial (There are ports of unsquashfs and mksquashfs.) No Partial (There are ports of unsquashfs and mksquashfs.) No Partial (There are ports of unsquashfs and mksquashfs and fusefs-port.[102][103]) No No No No No No
BlueStore/CephFS No Yes Client[cd] No Client[ce] No Client[cd] No No No No No No
File system DOS Linux macOS Windows 9x (historic) Windows (current) Classic
Mac OS		 FreeBSD OS/2 BeOS Minix Solaris z/OS Android
Close

Limits

While storage devices usually have their size expressed in powers of 10 (for instance a 1 TB Solid State Drive will contain at least 1,000,000,000,000 (1012, 10004) bytes), filesystem limits are invariably powers of 2, so usually expressed with IEC prefixes. For instance, a 1 TiB limit means 240, 10244 bytes. Approximations (rounding down) using power of 10 are also given below to clarify.

No filesystem has ever allowed NUL, so it won't be listed in the table below even if the text says “Any byte” or “?”.

More information File system, Maximum filename length ...
File system Maximum filename length Allowable characters in directory entries[cf] Maximum pathname length Maximum file size Maximum volume size[cg] Max number of files
AdvFS 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 16 TiB (17.59 TB) 16 TiB (17.59 TB) ?
APFS 255 bytes Any Unicode 9.0 character[104] except /[ch] ? 8 EiB (9.223 EB) ? 263 [105]
bcachefs 512 bytes[106] Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined 8 EiB (9.22 EB)[cj] 2040 PiB (2.3 EB)[ck] 264[cl]
BeeGFS 255 bytes Any byte[ch] No limit defined[ci] 16 EiB (18.44 EB) 16 EiB (18.44 EB) ?
BFS 255 bytes Any byte[ch] No limit defined[ci] 12,288 bytes to 260 GiB (279.1 GB)[cm] 256 PiB (288.2 PB) to 2 EiB (2.305 EB) Unlimited
BlueStore/CephFS 255 characters any byte, except "/" No limit defined Max. 264 bytes, 1 TiB (1.099 TB) by default [107] Not limited Not limited, default is 100,000 files per directory [108]
Btrfs 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined 16 EiB (18.44 EB) 16 EiB (18.44 EB) 264
CBM DOS 16 bytes Any byte No directory hierarchy (flat file system) 16 MiB (16.77 MB) 16 MiB (16.77 MB) ?
CP/M file system 8.3 ASCII except for < > . , ; : = ? * [ ] No directory hierarchy (but accessibility of files depends on user areas via USER command since CP/M 2.2) 32 MiB (33.55 MB) 512 MiB (536.8 MB) ?
DECtape 6.3 A–Z, 0–9 DTxN:FILNAM.EXT = 15 369,280 bytes
(577 × 640)		 369,920 bytes
(578 × 640)		 ?
Disk Operating System (GEC DOS) ? ? ? ? at least 131,072 bytes ? ?
Elektronika BK tape format 16 bytes ? No directory hierarchy (flat file system) 64 KiB (65.53 KB) Not limited. Approx. 800 KiB (819.2 KB) (one side) for 90 min cassette ?
EROFS 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 16 EiB (18.44 EB) 1 EiB (1.152 EB) 264
exFAT 255 UTF-16 characters Unicode except for control codes 0x0000 - 0x001F or " * / : < > ? \ | [109] 32,760 characters with each path component no more than 255 characters[110] 16 EiB (18.44 EB)[110] 64 ZiB (75.55 ZB) (276 bytes) ?
ext 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 2 GiB (2.147 GB) 2 GiB (2.147 GB) ?
ext2 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 16 GiB (17.17 GB) to 2 TiB (2.199 TB)[cg] 2 TiB (2.199 TB) to 32 TiB (35.18 TB) ?
ext3 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 16 GiB (17.17 GB) to 2 TiB (2.199 TB)[cg] 2 TiB (2.199 TB) to 32 TiB (35.18 TB) ?
ext4 255 bytes[111] Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 16 GiB (17.17 GB) to 16 TiB (17.59 TB)[cg][112] 1 EiB (1.152 EB) 232 (static inode limit specified at creation)
F2FS 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 4,228,213,756 KiB (4.329 TB) 16 TiB (17.59 TB) ?
FAT (8-bit) 6.3 (binary files) / 9 characters (ASCII files) ASCII (0x00 and 0xFF not allowed in first character) No directory hierarchy (flat file system) ? ? ?
FAT12/FAT16 8.3 (255 UCS-2 characters with LFN)[cn] SFN: OEM A-Z, 0–9, ! # $ % & ' ( ) - @ ^ _ ` { } ~, 0x80-0xFF, 0x20. LFN: Unicode except " * / : < > ? \ | [cf][ch] No limit defined[ci] 32 MiB (33.55 MB) (4 GiB (4.294 GB))[co] 1 MiB (1.048 MB) to 32 MiB (33.55 MB) ?
FAT16B/FAT16X 8.3 (255 UCS-2 characters with LFN)[cn] SFN: OEM A-Z, 0–9, ! # $ % & ' ( ) - @ ^ _ ` { } ~, 0x80-0xFF, 0x20. LFN: Unicode except " * / : < > ? \ | [cf][cn][ch] No limit defined[ci] 2 (4) GiB[co] (2.147 GB) 16 MiB (16.77 MB) to 2 (4) GiB (2.147 GB) ?
FAT32/FAT32X 8.3 (255 UCS-2 characters with LFN)[cn] SFN: OEM A-Z, 0–9, ! # $ % & ' ( ) - @ ^ _ ` { } ~, 0x80-0xFF, 0x20. LFN: Unicode except " * / : < > ? \ | [cf][cn][ch] 32,760 characters with each path component no more than 255 characters[110] 4 GiB (4.294 GB)[110] 512 MiB (536.8 MB) to 16 TiB (17.59 TB)[cp] ?
FATX 42 bytes[cn] ASCII. No limit defined[ci] 2 GiB (2.147 GB) 16 MiB (16.77 MB) to 2 GiB (2.147 GB) ?
FFS 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 4 GiB (4.294 GB) 256 TiB (281.4 TB) ?
Files-11 ODS-1[15] 9.3 in RADIX-50 A–Z, 0–9, $ No limit defined; only two-level paths supported by operating systems 2 TiB (2.199 TB) 2 TiB (2.199 TB) 216-1
Files-11 ODS-2[16] 20 bytes A–Z, 0–9, $, -, _ 4,096 bytes[cq] 2 TiB (2.199 TB) 2 TiB (2.199 TB) 224-1
Files-11 ODS-5 236 bytes[cr] ISO 8859-1 or UCS-2 4,096 bytes[cq] 2 TiB (2.199 TB) 2 TiB (2.199 TB) ?
Fossil ? ? ? ? ? ?
GEC DOS filing system extended 8 bytes A–Z, 0–9. Period was directory separator ? No limit defined (workaround for OS limit) ? at least 131,072 bytes ? ?
GEMDOS 8.3 A-Z, a-z, 0-9 ! @ # $ % ^ & ( ) + - = ~ ` ; ' " , < > | [ ] ( ) _[114] ? ? ? ?
GFS2 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 100 TiB (109.95 TB) to 8 EiB (9.223 EB)[cs] 100 TiB (109.95 TB) to 8 EiB (9.223 EB)[cs] ?
GFS 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 2 TiB (2.199 TB) to 8 EiB (9.223 EB)[ct] 2 TiB (2.199 TB) to 8 EiB (9.223 EB)[ct] ?
GPFS 255 UTF-8 codepoints[citation needed] Any byte[ch] No limit defined[ci] 9 EiB (10.37 EB) 524,288 YiB (299 bytes) ?
HAMMER 1023 bytes[116] Any byte except /[ch] ? ? 1 EiB (1.152 EB)[117] ?
HFS 31 bytes Any byte except :; in macOS, : in file names is converted to / in the file system, and / are disallowed[ch] Unlimited 2 GiB (2.147 GB) 2 TiB (2.199 TB) ?
HFS Plus 255 UTF-16 code units[cu] Any valid Unicode character except :;[cv] in macOS, : in file names is converted to / in the file system, and / are disallowed[ch] Unlimited slightly less than 8 EiB (9.223 EB) slightly less than 8 EiB (9.223 EB)[118][119] ?
High Sierra Format ? ? ? ? ? ?
HPFS 255 bytes Any byte[cw] No limit defined[ci] 2 GiB (2.147 GB) 2 TiB (2.199 TB)[cx] ?
IBM SFS 8.8 ? Non-hierarchical[120] ? ? ?
ISO 9660:1988 Level 1: 8.3,
Level 2 & 3: ~ 180		 Depends on Level[cy] ~ 180 bytes? 4 GiB (4.294 GB) (Level 1 & 2) to 8 TiB (8.796 TB) (Level 3)[cz] 8 TiB (8.796 TB)[da] ?
ISO 9660:1999 ? ? ? ? ? ?
JFS 255 bytes Any Unicode No limit defined[ci] 4 PiB (4.503 PB) 32 PiB (36.02 PB) ?
JFS1 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 8 EiB (9.223 EB) 512 TiB (562.9 TB) to 4 PiB (4.503 PB) ?
ISO 9660: Joliet extension 64 characters All UCS-2 code except *, /, \, :, ;, and ?[121] ? same as ISO 9660:1988 same as ISO 9660:1988 ?
Level-D 6.3 A–Z, 0–9 DEVICE:FILNAM.EXT[PROJCT,PROGRM] = 7 + 10 + 15 = 32; + 5*7 for SFDs = 67 34,359,738,368 words (235); 206,158,430,208 SIXBIT bytes Approx 12 GiB (12.88 GB) (64 × 178 MiB (186.6 MB)) ?
Lustre 255 bytes Any byte[ch] No limit defined[ci] 16 EiB (18.44 EB) on ZFS 16 EiB (18.44 EB) ?
MFS 255 bytes Any byte except : No directory hierarchy (flat file system) 256 MiB (268.4 MB) 256 MiB (268.4 MB) ?
MicroDOS file system 14 bytes ? ? 16 MiB (16.77 MB) 32 MiB (33.55 MB) ?
Minix V1 FS 14 or 30 bytes, set at filesystem creation time Any byte[ch] No limit defined[ci] 256.5 MiB (268.9 MB) [db] 64 MiB (67.10 MB) ?
Minix V2 FS 14 or 30 bytes, set at filesystem creation time Any byte[ch] No limit defined[ci] 2 GiB (2.147 GB) [db] 1 GiB (1.073 GB) ?
Minix V3 FS 60 bytes Any byte[ch] No limit defined[ci] 2 GiB (2.147 GB) 4 GiB (4.294 GB) ?
NILFS 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 8 EiB (9.223 EB) 8 EiB (9.223 EB) ?
NOVA 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 16 EiB (18.44 EB) 16 EiB (18.44 EB) ?
NSS 256 UTF-16 code units Depends on namespace used[dc] Only limited by client 8 TiB (8.796 TB) 8 TiB (8.796 TB) ?
NTFS 255 UTF-16 code units In Win32 namespace: any UTF-16 code unit (case-insensitive) except /\:*"?<>|

In POSIX namespace: any UTF-16 code unit (case-sensitive) except /[122]

 32,767 UTF-16 code units with each path component (directory or filename) up to 255 UTF-16 code units long.[ci]

However, the limit is approximate due to UNC, and some limitations may be removed on demand.[123]

 16 TiB (17.59 TB) to 8 PiB (9.007 PB)[dd][124] 16 TiB (17.59 TB) to 8 PiB (9.007 PB)[dd][124] 232
NWFS 80 bytes[de] Depends on namespace used[dc] No limit defined[ci] 4 GiB (4.294 GB) 1 TiB (1.099 TB) ?
OCFS 255 bytes Any byte[ch] No limit defined[ci] 8 TiB (8.796 TB) 8 TiB (8.796 TB) ?
OCFS2 255 bytes Any byte[ch] No limit defined[ci] 4 PiB (4.503 PB) 4 PiB (4.503 PB) ?
QFS 255 bytes Any byte[ch] No limit defined[ci] 16 EiB (18.44 EB)[df] 4 PiB (4.503 PB)[df] ?
ReFS 255 UTF-16 code units[125] In Win32 namespace: any UTF-16 code unit (case-insensitive) except /\:*"?<>|

In POSIX namespace: any UTF-16 code unit (case-sensitive) except /[125][126]

 32,767 characters with each path component (directory or filename) up to 255 characters long[125] 16 EiB (18.44 EB)[125][127] 1 YiB (1.208 YB)[125] ?
ReiserFS 4032 bytes/255 characters Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 8 TiB (8.796 TB)[dg] (v3.6), 4 GiB (4.294 GB) (v3.5) 16 TiB (17.59 TB) ?
Reiser4 3976 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 8 TiB (8.796 TB) on x86 ? ?
ISO 9660: Rock Ridge extension 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] same as ISO 9660:1988 same as ISO 9660:1988 ?
RT-11 6.3 in RADIX-50 A–Z, 0–9, $ No directory hierarchy (flat file system) 33,554,432 bytes
(65536 × 512)		 33,554,432 bytes ?
SquashFS 256 bytes ? No limit defined 16 EiB (18.44 EB) 16 EiB (18.44 EB) ?
UDF 255 bytes Any Unicode 1,023 bytes[dh] 16 EiB (18.44 EB) 512 MiB (536.8 MB) to 16 TiB (17.59 TB) ?
UFS1 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 16 GiB (17.17 GB) to 256 TiB (281.4 TB) 16 EiB (18.44 EB) Subdirectory per directory is 32,767[129]
UFS2 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 512 GiB (549.7 GB) to 32 PiB (36.02 PB) 512 ZiB (604.4 ZB)[130] (279 bytes) Subdirectory per directory is 32,767[129]
UniFS No limit defined (depends on client) ? No limit defined (depends on client) Available cache space at time of write (depends on platform) No limit defined No limit defined
VaultFS configurable (1024 default) Any byte No limit defined No limit defined No limit defined No limit defined
Version 6 Unix file system (V6FS) 14 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 16 MiB (16.77 MB)[di] 32 MiB (33.55 MB) ?
Version 7 Unix file system (V7FS) 14 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 1 GiB (1.073 GB)[dj] 2 TiB (2.199 TB) ?
VMFS2 128 Any byte except /[ch] 2,048 4 TiB (4.398 TB)[dk] 64 TiB (70.36 TB) ?
VMFS3 128 Any byte except /[ch] 2,048 2 TiB (2.199 TB)[dk] 64 TiB (70.36 TB) ?
VxFS 255 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 16 EiB (18.44 EB) ? ?
XFS 255 bytes[dl] Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 8 EiB (9.223 EB)[dm] 8 EiB (9.223 EB)[dm] 264
Xiafs 248 bytes Any byte[ch] No limit defined[ci] 64 MiB (67.10 MB) 2 GiB (2.147 GB) ?
ZFS 1023 bytes Any byte except /[ch] No limit defined[ci] 16 EiB (18.44 EB) 268,435,456 QiB (2128 bytes) 2128
File system Maximum filename length Allowable characters in directory entries[cf] Maximum pathname length Maximum file size Maximum volume size[cg] Max number of files
Close
More information File system, Start date (time) ...
Date ranges and time granularity
File system Start date (time) End date (time) Granularity

(last modified time)

APFS 1970-01-01 00:00:00 2554-07-21 23:34:33 0.000000001 seconds (1 nanosecond)
Btrfs 1970-01-01 - ~292 billion years 1970-01-01 + ~292 billion years 0.000000001 seconds (1 nanosecond)
exFAT [dn] 1980-01-01 00:00:00 2107-12-31 23:59:59 0.01 seconds (10 milliseconds)
ext2, ext3 1901-12-14 20:45:52 2038-01-19 03:14:07 1 second
ext4 1901-12-14 20:45:52 2446-05-10 22:38:55 0.000000001 seconds (1 nanosecond)
FAT12, FAT16, FAT32[do] 1980-01-01 00:00:00 2107-12-31 23:59:58 2 seconds
ISO 9660[133] 0001-01-01 9999-12-31[dp] 0.01 seconds (10 milliseconds)
JFS Unknown Unknown 0.000000001 seconds (1 nanosecond)
MFS, HFS, HFS Plus 1904-01-01 00:00:00 2040-02-06 06:28:15 1 second
NTFS 1601-01-01 60056-05-28 0.0000001 seconds (100 nanoseconds)
ReiserFS 1901-12-14 20:45:52 2038-01-19 1 second
tux3 Unknown Unknown 0.00390625 seconds (1/256th of a second)
UDF 0001-01-01 9999-12-31 0.000001 seconds (1 microsecond)
UFS1 1901-12-14 20:45:52 2038-01-19 03:14:07 Originally one second; 0.000000001 seconds (1 nanosecond) in 4.4BSD and 4.4BSD-derived systems.
UFS2 1970-01-01 - ~292 billion years 1970-01-01 + ~292 billion years 0.000000001 seconds (1 nanosecond)
XFS 1901-12-13 2486-07-02 0.000000001 seconds (1 nanosecond)
Close

See also

Notes

  1. [a]
    IBM introduced JFS with the initial release of AIX Version 3.1 in 1990. This file system now called JFS1. The new JFS, on which the Linux port was based, was first shipped in OS/2 Warp Server for e-Business in 1999. The same sourcebase was also used for release JFS2 on AIX 5L.
  2. [b]
    Microsoft first introduced FAT32 in MS-DOS 7.1 / Windows 95 OSR2 (OEM Service Release 2) and then later in Windows 98. NT-based Windows did not have any support for FAT32 up to Windows NT4; Windows 2000 was the first NT-based Windows OS that received the ability to work with it.
  3. [c]
    Implemented in later versions as an extension
  4. [d]
    Some FAT implementations, such as in Linux, show file modification timestamp (mtime) in the metadata change timestamp (ctime) field. This timestamp is however, not updated on file metadata change.
  5. [e]
    Particular Installable File System drivers and operating systems may not support extended attributes on FAT12 and FAT16. The OS/2 and Windows NT filesystem drivers for FAT12 and FAT16 support extended attributes (using a "EA DATA. SF" pseudo-file to reserve the clusters allocated to them). Other filesystem drivers for other operating systems do not.
  6. [f]
    The f-node contains a field for a user identifier. This is not used except by OS/2 Warp Server, however.
  7. [g]
    NTFS access control lists can express any access policy possible using simple POSIX file permissions (and far more), but use of a POSIX-like interface is not supported without an add-on such as Services for UNIX or Cygwin.
  8. [h]
    As of Vista, NTFS has support for Mandatory Labels, which are used to enforce Mandatory Integrity Control.[12]
  9. [i]
    Initially, ReFS lacked support for ADS, but Server 2012 R2 and up add support for ADS on ReFS
  10. [j]
    Access-control lists and MAC labels are layered on top of extended attributes.
  11. [k]
    Some operating systems implemented extended attributes as a layer over UFS1 with a parallel backing file (e.g., FreeBSD 4.x).
  12. [l]
    Some Installable File System drivers and operating systems may not support extended attributes, access control lists or security labels on these filesystems. Linux kernels prior to 2.6.x may either be missing support for these altogether or require a patch.
  13. [m]
    Metadata is mostly checksummed,[13] however Direct/indirect/triple-indirect block maps are not protected by checksums[14]
  14. [n]
    Creation time stored since June 2015, xfsprogs version 3.2.3
  15. [o]
    The local time, time zone/UTC offset, and date are derived from the time settings of the reference/single timesync source in the NDS tree.
  16. [p]
    Novell calls this feature "multiple data streams". Published specifications say that NWFS allows for 16 attributes and 10 data streams, and NSS allows for unlimited quantities of both.
  17. [q]
    Some file and directory metadata is stored on the NetWare server irrespective of whether Directory Services is installed or not, like date/time of creation, file size, purge status, etc; and some file and directory metadata is stored in NDS/eDirectory, like file/object permissions, ownership, etc.
  18. [r]
    Record Management Services (RMS) attributes include record type and size, among many others.
  19. [s]
    File permission in 9P are a variation of the traditional Unix permissions with some minor changes, e.g. the suid bit is replaced by a new 'exclusive access' bit.
  20. [t]
    Supported on FreeBSD and Linux implementations, support may not be available on all operating systems.
  21. [u]
    Solaris "extended attributes" are really full-blown alternate data streams, in both the Solaris UFS and ZFS.
  22. [v]
    Access times are preserved from the original file system at creation time, but Rock Ridge file systems themselves are read-only.
  23. [w]
    libburnia can back up and restore ACLs with file system creation and extraction programs, but no kernel support exists.
  24. [x]
    libburnia can back up and restore extended attributes and MAC labels with file system creation and extraction programs, but no kernel support exists.
  25. [y]
    There are two variants of APFS, one that is case-sensitive, and one that is not. The non-case-sensitive variant is the default one for APFS in macOS 10.13+, while the case-sensitive variant is the default one for iOS 10.3+.
  26. [z]
    System V Release 4, and some other Unix systems, retrofitted symbolic links to their versions of the Version 7 Unix file system, although the original version didn't support them.
  27. [aa]
    Context based symlinks were supported in GFS, GFS2 only supports standard symlinks since the bind mount feature of the Linux VFS has made context based symlinks obsolete
  28. [ab]
    Optional journaling of data
  29. [ac]
    As of Windows Vista, NTFS fully supports symbolic links.[18] NTFS 3.0 (Windows 2000) and higher can create junctions, which allow entire directories (but not individual files) to be mapped to elsewhere in the directory tree of the same partition (file system). These are implemented through reparse points, which allow the normal process of filename resolution to be extended in a flexible manner.
  30. [ad]
    NTFS stores everything, even the file data, as meta-data, so its log is closer to block journaling.
  31. [ae]
    While NTFS itself supports case sensitivity, the Win32 environment subsystem cannot create files whose names differ only by case for compatibility reasons. When a file is opened for writing, if there is any existing file whose name is a case-insensitive match for the new file, the existing file is truncated and opened for writing instead of a new file with a different name being created. Other subsystems like e. g. Services for Unix, that operate directly above the kernel and not on top of Win32 can have case-sensitivity.
  32. [af]
    Metadata-only journaling was introduced in the Mac OS X 10.2.2 HFS Plus driver; journaling is enabled by default on Mac OS X 10.3 and later.
  33. [ag]
    Although often believed to be case sensitive, HFS Plus normally is not. The typical default installation is case-preserving only. From Mac OS X 10.3 on the command newfs_hfs -s will create a case-sensitive new file system.[20] HFS Plus version 5 optionally supports case-sensitivity. However, since case-sensitivity is fundamentally different from case-insensitivity, a new signature was required so existing HFS Plus utilities would not see case-sensitivity as a file system error that needed to be corrected. Since the new signature is 'HX', it is often believed this is a new filesystem instead of a simply an upgraded version of HFS Plus.[21][22]
  34. [ah]
    Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) and late versions of Panther (10.3) provide file change logging (it's a feature of the file system software, not of the volume format, actually).[23]
  35. [ai]
    "Soft dependencies" (softdep) in NetBSD, called "soft updates" in FreeBSD provide meta-data consistency at all times without double writes (journaling)
  36. [aj]
    Journaled Soft Updates (SU+J) are the default as of FreeBSD 9.x-RELEASE [25][26]
  37. [ak]
    UDF, LFS, and NILFS are log-structured file systems and behave as if the entire file system were a journal.
  38. [al]
    Linux kernel versions 2.6.12 and newer.
  39. [am]
    Off by default.
  40. [an]
    Full block journaling for ReiserFS was added to Linux 2.6.8.
  41. [ao]
    Optionally no on IRIX and Linux.
  42. [ap]
    Particular Installable File System drivers and operating systems may not support case sensitivity for JFS. OS/2 does not, and Linux has a mount option for disabling case sensitivity.
  43. [aq]
    Case-sensitivity/Preservation depends on client. Windows, DOS, and OS/2 clients don't see/keep case differences, whereas clients accessing via NFS or AFP may.
  44. [ar]
    The file change logs, last entry change timestamps, and other filesystem metadata, are all part of the extensive suite of auditing capabilities built into NDS/eDirectory called NSure Audit.[28]
  45. [as]
    Available only in the "NFS" namespace.
  46. [at]
    These are referred to as "aliases".
  47. [au]
    ZFS is a transactional filesystem using copy-on-write semantics, guaranteeing an always-consistent on-disk state without the use of a traditional journal. However, it does also implement an intent log to provide better performance when synchronous writes are requested.
  48. [av]
    Btrfs is a transactional filesystem using copy-on-write semantics, guaranteeing an always-consistent on-disk state without the use of a traditional journal. It keeps track of last five transactions and uses checksums to find problematic drives, making write intent logs unnecessary.
  49. [aw]
    Bcachefs is a transactional filesystem using copy-on-write semantics, guaranteeing an always-consistent on-disk state without the use of a traditional journal. Journal commits are fairly expensive operations as they require issuing FLUSH and FUA operations to the underlying devices. By default, a journal flush is issued one second after a filesystem update has been done, which primarily records btree updates ordered by when they occurred. This option may be useful on a personal workstation or laptop, and perhaps less appropriate on a server.
  50. [ax]
    Since Windows 10 Enterprise Insider Preview build 19536
  51. [ay]
    A file system is self-healing if its capable to proactively autonomously detect and correct all but grave errors, faults and corruptions online both in internal metadata AND data. See US7694191B1 as example. This usually requires full checksumming as well as internal redundancy as well as corresponding logic.
  52. [az]
    only inside of Stacker 3/4 and DriveSpace 3 compressed volumes[31]
  53. [ba]
    Supported only on Windows Server SKUs. However, partitions deduplicated on Server can be used on Client.
  54. [bb]
    HFS+ does not actually encrypt files: to implement FileVault, OS X creates an HFS+ filesystem in a sparse, encrypted disk image that is automatically mounted over the home directory when the user logs in.
  55. [bc]
    Reiser4 supports transparent compression and encryption with the cryptcompress plugin which is the default file handler in version 4.1.
  56. [bd]
    VxFS provides an optional feature called "Storage Checkpoints" which allows for advanced file system snapshots.
  57. [be]
    Applies to proprietary ZFS release 30 and ZFS On Linux. Encryption support is not yet available in all OpenZFS ports.[38][39][40]
  58. [bf]
    LZJB (optimized for performance while providing decent data compression)
    LZ4 (faster & higher ratio than lzjb)
    gzip levels: 1 (fastest) to 9 (best), default is 6
    zstd positive: 1 (fastest) to 19 (best), default is 3
    zstd negative: 1(best & default)-10, 20, 30, …, 100, 500, 1000(fastest)
    zle: compresses runs of zeros.[41]
  59. [bg]
    disabling copy-on-write (COW) to prevent fragmentation also disables data checksumming
  60. [bh]
    zlib levels: 1 to 9, default is 3
    LZO (no levels) faster than ZLIB, worse ratio
    zstd levels: -15 to 15, default is 3 (higher levels are not available and may not bring a significant improvement, lower levels are close to real time)[42]
  61. [bi]
    none
    CRC-32C (default)
    crc64
    xxHash (64-bit)
    chacha20/poly1305 (When encryption is enabled. Encryption can only be specified for the entire filesystem, not per file or directory)[43]
  62. [bj]
    none (default)
    The three currently supported algorithms are gzip, LZ4, zstd.
    The compression level may also be optionally specified, as an integer between 0 and 15, e.g. lz4:15. 0 specifies the default compression level, 1 specifies the fastest and lowest compression ratio, and 15 the slowest and best compression ratio.[44]
  63. [bk]
    Work in progress[45]
  64. [bl]
  65. [bm]
    By using the per-file "integrity stream" that internally stores a checksum per cluster. Those per cluster checksums are not accessible so it is actually a per file feature and not a per block feature. Integrity streams are not enabled by default.[47]
  66. [bn]
    • 3.9: Added post process compression with LZ4 and ZSTD and transparent decompression.
  67. [bo]
    Some file system creation implementations reuse block references and support deduplication this way. This is not supported by the standard, but usually works well due to the file system's read-only nature.
  68. [bp]
    With software based on GNU Parted.
  69. [bq]
    Variable block size refers to systems which support different block sizes on a per-file basis. This is similar to extents but a slightly different implementational choice.
  70. [br]
    Only for "stuffed" inodes
  71. [bs]
    Other block:fragment size ratios supported; 8:1 is typical and recommended by most implementations.
  72. [bt]
    Fragments were planned, but never actually implemented on ext2 and ext3.
  73. [bu]
    Stores one largest extent in disk, and caches multiple extents in DRAM dynamically.
  74. [bv]
    Tail packing is technically a special case of block suballocation where the suballocation unit size is always 1 byte.
  75. [bw]
    In "extents" mode.
  76. [bx]
    _inline_all field in jfs_dinode.h
  77. [by]
    Each possible size (in sectors) of file tail has a corresponding suballocation block chain in which all the tails of that size are stored. The overhead of managing suballocation block chains is usually less than the amount of block overhead saved by being able to increase the block size but the process is less efficient if there is not much free disk space.
  78. [bz]
    Effectively, implemented as inline data support for any small extent.
  79. [ca]
    Effectively, implemented as many inline data extents packed in a single metadata node.
  80. [cb]
    Supported using only EVMS; not currently supported using LVM
  81. [cc]
    Provided in Plan 9 from User Space
  82. [cd]
    FUSE based driver available that can eliminate need for iSCSI gateways or SMB shares, but the physical backend store BlueStore only runs on Linux.
  83. [ce]
    Filesystem driver "Dokany" available that can eliminate need for iSCSI gateways or SMB shares, but the physical backend store BlueStore only runs on Linux.
  84. [cf]
    These are the restrictions imposed by the on-disk directory entry structures themselves, as well as those imposed by operating systems across all file systems. Particular Installable File System drivers may place restrictions of their own on file and directory names.
    DOS, Windows, and OS/2 allow only the following characters from the current 8-bit OEM codepage in SFNs: A-Z, 0-9, characters ! # $ % & ' ( ) - @ ^ _ ` { } ~, as well as 0x80-0xFF and 0x20 (SPACE). Specifically, lowercase letters a-z, characters " * / : < > ? \ | + , . ; = [ ], control codes 0x00-0x1F, 0x7F and in some cases also 0xE5 are not allowed.) In LFNs, all Unicode characters except \ / : ? * " > < | and NUL are allowed in file and directory names across all filesystems.
    Unix-like systems disallow the characters / and NUL in file and directory names across all file systems.
  85. [cg]
    For filesystems that have variable allocation unit (block/cluster) sizes, a range of size are given, indicating the maximum volume sizes for the minimum and the maximum possible allocation unit sizes of the filesystem (e.g. 512 bytes and 128 KiB (131.0 KB) for FAT — which is the cluster size range allowed by the on-disk data structures, although some Installable File System drivers and operating systems do not support cluster sizes larger than 32 KiB (32.76 KB)).
  86. [ch]
    In these filesystems the directory entries named "." and ".." have special status. Directory entries with these names are not prohibited, and indeed exist as normal directory entries in the on-disk data structures. However, they are mandatory directory entries, with mandatory values, that are automatically created in each directory when it is created; and directories without them are considered corrupt.
  87. [ci]
    The on-disk structures have no inherent limit. Particular Installable File System drivers and operating systems may impose limits of their own, however. Limited by its Current Directory Structure (CDS), DOS does not support more than 32 directory levels (except for DR DOS 3.31-6.0) or full pathnames longer than 66 bytes for FAT, or 255 characters for LFNs. Windows NT does not support full pathnames longer than 32,767 bytes for NTFS. Older POSIX APIs which rely on the PATH_MAX constant have a limit of 4,096 bytes on Linux but this can be worked around. Linux itself has no hard path length limits.[131][132]
  88. [cj]
    File size can be greater than total available space due to compression, extent sharing and holes in sparse files.
  89. [ck]
    255 member devices each limited to 8 PiB.
  90. [cl]
    Only 231-4096 files/directories with inodes_32bit option in effect.
  91. [cm]
    Varies wildly according to block size and fragmentation of block allocation groups.
  92. [cn]
    Depends on whether the FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32 implementation has support for LFNs. Where it does not, as in OS/2, DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98 in DOS-only mode and the Linux "msdos" driver, file names are limited to 8.3 format of 8-bit OEM characters (space padded in both the basename and extension parts) and may not contain NUL (end-of-directory marker) or character 5 (replacement for character 229 which itself is used as deleted-file marker). Short names also must not contain lowercase letters. A few special device names (CON, NUL, AUX, PRN, LPT1, COM1, etc.) should be avoided, as some operating systems (notably DOS, OS/2 and Windows) reserve them.
  93. [co]
    On-disk structures would support up to 4 GiB (4.294 GB), but practical file size is limited by volume size.
  94. [cp]
    While FAT32 partitions this large work fine once created, some software won't allow creation of FAT32 partitions larger than 32 GiB (34.35 GB). This includes, notoriously, the Windows XP installation program and the Disk Management console in Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. Use FDISK from a Windows ME Emergency Boot Disk to avoid.[113]
  95. [cq]
    Maximum pathname length is 4,096 bytes, but quoted limits on individual components add up to 1,664 bytes.
  96. [cr]
    Maximum combined filename/filetype length is 236 bytes; each component has an individual maximum length of 255 bytes.
  97. [cs]
    Depends on CPU arch. For 32bit kernels the max is 16 TiB (17.59 TB).[115]
  98. [ct]
    Depends on kernel version and arch. For 2.4 kernels the max is 2 TiB (2.199 TB). For 32-bit 2.6 kernels it is 16 TiB (17.59 TB). For 64-bit 2.6 kernels it is 8 EiB (9.223 EB).
  99. [cu]
    The "classic" Mac OS provides two sets of functions to retrieve file names from an HFS Plus volume, one of them returning the full Unicode names, the other shortened names fitting in the older 31 byte limit to accommodate older applications.
  100. [cv]
    HFS Plus mandates support for an escape sequence to allow arbitrary Unicode. Users of older software might see the escape sequences instead of the desired characters.
  101. [cw]
    The "." and ".." directory entries in HPFS that are seen by applications programs are a partial fiction created by the Installable File System drivers. The on-disk data structure for a directory does not contain entries by those names, but instead contains a special "start" entry. Whilst on-disk directory entries by those names are not physically prohibited, they cannot be created in normal operation, and a directory containing such entries is corrupt.
  102. [cx]
    This is the limit of the on-disk structures. The HPFS Installable File System driver for OS/2 uses the top 5 bits of the volume sector number for its own use, limiting the volume size that it can handle to 64 GiB (68.71 GB).
  103. [cy]
    ISO 9660#Restrictions
  104. [cz]
    Through the use of multi-extents, a file can consist of multiple segments, each up to 4 GiB (4.294 GB) in size. See ISO 9660#The 2 GiB (2.147 GB) (or 4 GiB (4.294 GB) depending on implementation) file size limit
  105. [da]
    Assuming the typical 2048 Byte sector size. The volume size is specified as a 32 bit value identifying the number of sectors on the volume.
  106. [db]
    Sparse files can be larger than the file system size, even though they can't contain more data.
  107. [dc]
    NSS allows files to have multiple names, in separate namespaces.
  108. [dd]
    This is the limit of the on-disk structures. The NTFS driver for Windows NT limits the volume size that it can handle to 256 TiB (281.4 TB) and the file size to 16 TiB (17.59 TB) respectively; in Windows 10 version 1709, the limit is 8 PiB (9.007 PB) when using 2 MiB (2.097 MB) cluster size.
  109. [de]
    Some namespaces had lower name length limits. "LONG" had an 80-byte limit, "NWFS" 80 bytes, "NFS" 40 bytes and "DOS" imposed 8.3 filename.
  110. [df]
    QFS allows files to exceed the size of disk when used with its integrated HSM, as only part of the file need reside on disk at any one time.
  111. [dg]
    ReiserFS has a theoretical maximum file size of 1 EiB (1.152 EB), but "page cache limits this to 8 Ti on architectures with 32 bit int"[128]
  112. [dh]
    This restriction might be lifted in newer versions.
  113. [di]
    The file size in the inode is 1 8-bit byte followed by 1 16-bit word, for 24 bits. The actual maximum was 8,847,360 bytes, with 7 singly-indirect blocks and 1 doubly-indirect block; PWB/UNIX 1.0's variant had 8 singly-indirect blocks, making the maximum 524,288 bytes or half a MB.
  114. [dj]
    The actual maximum was 1,082,201,088 bytes, with 10 direct blocks, 1 singly-indirect block, 1 doubly-indirect block, and 1 triply-indirect block. The 4.0BSD and 4.1BSD versions, and the System V version, used 1,024-byte blocks rather than 512-byte blocks, making the maximum 4,311,812,608 bytes or approximately 4 GiB (4.294 GB).
  115. [dk]
    Maximum file size on a VMFS volume depends on the block size for that VMFS volume. The figures here are obtained by using the maximum block size.
  116. [dl]
    Note that the filename can be much longer XFS#Extended attributes
  117. [dm]
    XFS has a limitation under Linux 2.4 of 64 TiB (70.36 TB) file size, but Linux 2.4 only supports a maximum block size of 2 TiB (2.199 TB). This limitation is not present under IRIX.
  118. [dn]
    exFAT records 10-millisecond increments for last modification and creation time stamps, but only one second for the last access time stamp. exFAT file system specification
  119. [do]
    FAT has different granularities for different time stamps. Only the date of last access is recorded, not the time. The file creation time (treated as "change time" by Linux for this specific file system) is recorded more granularly, at a hundredth of a second. FAT: General Overview of On-Disk Format, page 23.
  120. [dp]
    Software that doesn't recognize Extended Attribute Records in ISO 9660 will only recognize a date range from 1900 to 2155, see section 9.1.5 Recording Date and Time in the source.

References

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