NTFS File System

Microsoft® Windows NT®/Windows® 2000 provides support for the NTFS file system. This file system supports object-oriented applications by treating all files as objects with user- and system-defined attributes. NTFS provides all the capabilities of the FAT file system without many of its limitations. Accessing files under NTFS is often faster than accessing similar files under the FAT file system.

NTFS also includes features not present in FAT, such as security, Unicode file names, automatic creation of MS-DOS® aliases, multiple data streams, and unique functionality specific to the POSIX subsystem. For more information about security, see Access Control. For more information about Unicode, see Unicode and Character Sets.

NTFS file names can be any practical length (up to 255 characters). There is no requirement that NTFS file names have extensions; however, many applications still create and use them. For more information, see File Name Conventions.

The following features are supported on NTFS:

• File System Recovery
• File Compression
• File Encryption
• Disk Quotas
• Sparse Files
• Distributed Link Tracking
• Reparse Points
• Volume Mount Points and Mounting Volumes