What is NTFS?
NTFS is an acronym for NT File System or New Technology File System and is a file system used by the Windows operating system to identify how files are stored, named and organized on a hard- solid state drive (SSD), USB memory stick, microSD card and other similar storage devices.When was NTFS invented and by whom?
NTFS is a file system that was created by Microsoft. It was introduced for the first time in July 1993 with Windows NT 3.1. Because it was designed to work with the Windows NT family of operating systems, Microsoft called it NT File System, becoming an abbreviated form of NTFS. Prior to NTFS, Windows operating systems used the FAT32 file system, and it had its limitations, such as the fact that it could only work with files smaller than 4 GB and partitions with a maximum size of 8 TO. It also did not offer data protection in the event of a power failure. NTFS was the answer to all these issues and even more: it provided better support for metadata, higher performance due to more efficient data structure, increased reliability, and so on. As a file system, NTFS has evolved during its lifetime, and Microsoft continues to improve it over its original version and develop a series of updates as the years go by. The main NTFS versions are:- NTFS 1: the first version to see the daylight when Windows NT 3.1 was released in 1993.
- NTFS 1.1: It was released in 1995 with Windows NT 3.51.
- NTFS 1.2: released with Windows NT 4.0 in 1996.
- NTFS 3.0: was introduced for the first time in Windows 2000, which has been available for consumers since 2000.
NTFS 3.1: It was launched with Windows XP in 2001. Although it has received many new features after that, the NTFS base version has not changed since then. NTFS 3.1 was used in Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and 8.1 and Windows 10.
Reasons to use NTFS
NTFS is a file system that has many advantages. The most important are:
NTFS is a reliable file system. It can restore file system consistency in the event of a power failure. It can also rebuild the map with defective sectors by moving the data that can be retrieved from these sectors to others that are healthy and labeling the bad sectors so they will no longer be used.Provides security, giving you the option to set file and folder permissions, so only users and user groups that they specify can access them.
Supports large partitions with a maximum theoretical dimension of 16 EiB (exbibytes) minus 1 KB, ie about 1152921 TB (terabytes)! However, the maximum size of a partition supported by Windows operating systems is only 256 TB, which is a considerable value anyway.
NTFS supports disk shares, which means you can control the available storage space on a hard drive or partition. They give administrators the option to configure the amount of information each user can store on a particular storage unit. If you want to know how to do this on your own Windows computer, read this guide: Simple Questions: What are Disk Dimensions & How Do They Set Up In Windows ?.
Can use file compression to increase free storage available on a storage drive. However, for the home user, the gain is overshadowed by the loss of system performance: every time you access compressed files, the operating system needs to decompress them and every time you finish working with them, they have to recompile them.
It gives you the option to use mounted volume, that is, you can access hard disk volumes as if they were regular folders in the file system. NTFS can recover free storage from "sparse" files by monitoring the consecutive zeros from the disk files. Instead of keeping the disk space occupied with empty information, these file regions can be replaced with metadata telling the operating system that there is that empty space.
NTFS has logging, which means it keeps a log with the files added, modified or deleted by
Reasons to use NTFS
NTFS is a file system that has many advantages. The most important are: NTFS is a reliable file system. It can restore file system consistency in the event of a power failure. It can also rebuild the map with defective sectors by moving the data that can be retrieved from these sectors to others that are healthy and labeling the bad sectors so they will no longer be used. Provides security, giving you the option to set file and folder permissions, so only users and user groups that they specify can access them.Supports large partitions with a maximum theoretical dimension of 16 EiB (exbibytes) minus 1 KB, ie about 1152921 TB (terabytes)! However, the maximum size of a partition supported by Windows operating systems is only 256 TB, which is a considerable value anyway.
NTFS supports disk shares, which means you can control the available storage space on a hard drive or partition. They give administrators the option to configure the amount of information each user can store on a particular storage unit. If you want to know how to do this on your own Windows computer, read this guide: Simple Questions: What are Disk Dimensions & How Do They Set Up In Windows ?.
Can use file compression to increase free storage available on a storage drive. However, for the home user, the gain is overshadowed by the loss of system performance: every time you access compressed files, the operating system needs to decompress them and every time you finish working with them, they have to recompile them. It gives you the option to use mounted volume, that is, you can access hard disk volumes as if they were regular folders in the file system.
NTFS can recover free storage from "sparse" files by monitoring the consecutive zeros from the disk files. Instead of keeping the disk space occupied with empty information, these file regions can be replaced with metadata telling the operating system that there is that empty space. NTFS has logging, which means it keeps a log with the files added, modified, or deleted from a storage drive.
Reasons not to use NTFS
The disadvantages of the NTFS file system are:
Many mobile devices like smartphones and Android tablets do not support NTFS by default.NTFS drives can be read by Mac OS computers, but they can only be written using third-party applications. Some older media devices, such as DVD players, TVs, or digital cameras, do not support NTFS storage devices. It does not include a system to guarantee the performance or bandwidth of the file system, as do other newer file systems. It can not work with an unlimited number of sub-directories as other file systems do. It is limited to 16,000 folders in one directory. For most users, however, this is not a problem.
How is NTFS used?
NTFS is the file system used by Microsoft's operating systems, starting with Windows XP. All versions of Windows since then use NTFS version 3.1. NTFS is also an excellent choice and a popular file system for large capacity hard disk drives because it supports large partitions and files. NTFS is not often used on SD cards and small capacity USB memory sticks. In these cases, FAT32 or exFAT are the preferred systems because they offer better compatibility with media devices.If you want to know more about the best practices for the file system used to format different devices, should you read this guide: FAT32 or NTFS? How do I format SD cards, USB sticks or hard drives ?.
Is NTFS faster or slower than FAT32? The NTFS file system should be faster than FAT32. To see if this is true, I ran a few tests with CrystalDiskMark, using the two file systems on several storage devices I had on my desk. I used:
The 256GB Samsung NVMe M.2 PCI Express X4 SSD from our Lenovo Legion Y520 (represented by number 1),
- A 250GB SATA III Samsung 750 EVO (represented by number 2),
- a Kingston DataTraveler microDuo 3C (represented by number 3),
- a IronKey D300 (represented by number 4) and
- a SanDisk Ultra Fit (represented by number 5).
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