NTFS is known as the New Technology File System that was first introduced in 1993 as a part of the Windows NT 3.1 release. It is the system that is used by the Windows NT operating system for storing, finding, and organizing files from the hard disk. As compared to the latest Windows servers, it is the recent version. It has the full set of features including disk quotas, security descriptors, rich metadata, and encryption.
NTFS is mainly used by different Microsoft’s Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows NT, and Windows Vista operating systems. Apart from the Windows operating system, NTFS is also supported by BSD and LINUX operating systems. However, in macOS NTFS is available for read-only support.
How Does NTFS- file system work?
Let’s check out the technical breakdown of NTFS which is comprised of the following steps:
- At first, the disk is formatted.
- Then a file is divided into further partitions and it is done within the hard disk.
- In every single partition of the file, the operating system checks every file that is already stored in the specific operating system.
- Then the searched file is divided and stored in the form of clusters or the disk spaces factor. The size of each file is predefined means every file has the same size.
- The size of every cluster will be in the range of 512 bytes to 64 bytes.
However, one can control the size of the cluster according to organization priority. That is based on two factors:
1-The number of accesses given to access a file.
2-Efficient use of the hard disk space.
Features of NTFS
Transactional NTFS
It is one of the most interesting features of NTFS. With the help of this feature, software developers can build an application that can completely succeed or fail in operation. So, it gives the advantage to software developers that if they are processing any serious problem this does not run the risk of applying some changes that can work or not.
Journaling file system
NTFS is a special journaling system that provides a way for applying the system changes. The changes are to be written into a log or a journal as rough work before actually being written in the system. In this way, you can avoid any problem before it can disturb the whole process. Apart from this, if an event of failure comes the system can go back to the well-working condition without any serious damage.
Volume Shadow Copy Service
It is one of the efficient features for all the users who are interested in the backup of files. It is commonly used by online backup services or other backup software tools. With the help of the volume shadow copy service in NTFS, you can backup any file that is currently being used. Windows can automatically backup files and store them on a hard disk.
Hard Disk Support Capacity
NTFS theoretically can support the hard drives that are undersized by 16EB. In some Windows 10, 8, and newer versions of Windows the size of individual files is adjusted under 256 Terabytes.
Encryption NT File System
NTFS also supports the encryption file system. EFS supports file-level encryption in which each file and folder can be encrypted efficiently. In most cases, full disk encryption is provided but individual file and folder encryption is the unique feature supported by NTFS.
Disk Usage Quota
NTFS also provides a disk usage quota. It is beneficial for the hard disk that is used by different persons. An administrator can control the quota and specify each quota for a different user. It is commonly used to control the amount of shared space.
Self-Healing NTFS
NTFS corrects and examines the transient corruption problems of files in the background without affecting the volume or taking it offline. So, we can say that it is self-healing.
NTFS also supports many other efficient features like indexed attributes, compressed attributes, sparse files, reparse points, hard links, and many others.
Advantages of NTFS
There are other alternative file systems like FAT and HPFS etc but NTFS provides unique advantages like:
- It provides enhanced storage space by file compression.
- NTFS keeps the complete log pf and audit of the files added. In case of any mishap or file deletion, you can easily find the backups. All the data is stored in the master file table.
- The hard disk space is controlled and monitored by the disk quota feature. In this way, businesses have more control over the storage space.
- It provides a more secure system for your mission-critical files and folders. NTFS enables you to grant permission to specific files.
- It increases the size by adding the unallocated spaces from the different disk or the same disk.
Drawbacks of NFTS
One of the worst things about NTFS is the latest capabilities and features that are not available for the older technologies. It is designed to be operated only by the WIndows hence the mac or Android users can not use this system. In most cases, these operating systems are not compatible. Suppose if a person uses TVs, DVD players, or a digital camera they can not rely on NTFS storage. In the case of Mac OS computers, the NTFS is only valid for formatted drives. It does not provide the performance guarantee or the bandwidth for the file system that can cause some issues for many users.
Final Verdict
Overall, NTFS is a high-performance and strong logging file system that provides user access control to various users and is compatible with the different operating systems. It also gives support for data recovery, security, UNICODE names, multi-streaming, file system, and fault tolerance.