Filesystem

  • Disk File Systems:
    • NTFS: Widely used in Windows environments.
    • FAT32, (OLD)
    • exFAT: Designed for flash drives
    • ext3/ext4: Used in Linux
    • HFS+ (OLD apple FS)
    • APFS: Apple File System
  • Network File Systems: NFS, SMB/CIFS.
  • Distributed File Systems: HDFS, Ceph.
  • Flash File Systems: YAFFS, F2FS.
  • Special-Purpose File Systems: procfs, sysfs, tmpfs.

Also IPFS for web3 lol

SE350

Why do we need filesystems?

  • Long-term storage
  • Sharable data between processes
  • Structured, hierarchic relationships among files

Some terminology:

Field

  • Basic element of data
  • Contains a single value (student name)
  • Characterized by its length and data type

Record

  • Collection of related fields
  • Treated as a unit

File

  • Collection of similar records
  • Treated as a single entity
  • Have file names
  • May restrict access

Database

  • Collection of related data
  • Relationships exist among elements

Typical File Operations

  • Create
  • Delete
  • Open
  • Close
  • Read
  • Write
  • (Seek)

Typical Record Operations

  • Retrieve All
  • Retrieve One
  • Retrieve Next
  • Retrieve Previous
  • Insert One
  • Delete One
  • Update One
  • Retrieve Few

Records vs. Blocks

Records are the logical unit of access of a structured file, whereas blocks are the unit of I/O with secondary storage.

Concepts