The following lists identify, characterize, and link to more thorough information on file systems. Many older operating systems support only their one "native" file system, which does not bear any name apart from the name of the operating system itself.
Disk file systems Disk file systems are usually block-oriented. Files in a block-oriented file system are sequences of blocks, often featuring fully random-access read, write, and modify operations.
ADFS – Acorn's Advanced Disc filing system, successor to DFS. AdvFS – Advanced File System, designed by Digital Equipment Corporation for their Digital UNIX (now Tru64 UNIX) operating system. APFS – Apple File System is a file system for Apple products. AthFS – AtheOS File System, a 64-bit journaled filesystem now used by Syllable. Also called AFS. BFS – the Boot File System used on System V release 4.0 and UnixWare. BFS – the Be File System used on BeOS, occasionally misnamed as BeFS. Open source implementation called OpenBFS is used by the Haiku operating system. Byte File System (BFS) - file system used by z/VM for Unix applications Btrfs – is a copy-on-write file system for Linux announced by Oracle in 2007 and published under the GNU General Public License (GPL). CFS – The Cluster File System from Veritas, a Symantec company. It is the parallel access version of VxFS. CP/M file system — Native filesystem used in the CP/M (Control Program for Microcomputers) operating system which was first released in 1974. DFS – Acorn's Disc filing system. DOS 3.x – Original floppy operating system and file system developed for the Apple II. Extent File System (EFS) – an older block filing system under IRIX. ext – Extended file system, designed for Linux systems. ext2 – Second extended file system, designed for Linux systems. ext3 – A journaled form of ext2. ext4 – A follow-up for ext3 and also a journaled filesystem with support for extents. ext3cow – A versioning file system form of ext3. FAT – File Allocation Table, initially used on DOS and Microsoft Windows and now widely used for portable USB storage and some other devices; FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 for 12-, 16- and 32-bit table depths. VFAT – Optional layer on Microsoft Windows FAT system to allow long (up to 255 character) filenames instead of only the 8.3 filenames allowed in the plain FAT filesystem. FATX – A modified version of Microsoft Windows FAT system that is used on the original Xbox console. FFS (Amiga) – Fast File System, used on Amiga systems. This FS has evolved over time. Now counts FFS1, FFS Intl, FFS DCache, FFS2. FFS – Berkeley Fast File System, used on *BSD systems Fossil – Plan 9 from Bell Labs snapshot archival file system. Files-11 – OpenVMS file system; also used on some PDP-11 systems; supports record-oriented files Flex machine file system HAMMER — clustered DragonFly BSD filesystem, production-ready since DragonFly 2.2 (2009) HAMMER2 — recommended as the default root filesystem in DragonFly since 5.2 release in 2018 HFS – Hierarchical File System in IBM's MVS from MVS/ESA OpenEdition through z/OS V2R4; not to be confused with Apple's HFS. IBM stated that z/OS users should migrate from HFS to zFS, and in z/OS V2R5 dropped support for HFS. HFS – Hierarchical File System, in use until HFS+ was introduced on Mac OS 8.1. Also known as Mac OS Standard format. Successor to Macintosh File System (MFS) & predecessor to HFS+; not to be confused with IBM's HFS provided with z/OS HFS+ – Updated version of Apple's HFS, Hierarchical File System, supported on Mac OS 8.1 & above, including macOS. Supports file system journaling, enabling recovery of data after a system crash. Also referred to as 'Mac OS Extended format or HFS Plus HPFS – High Performance File System, used on OS/2 HTFS – High Throughput Filesystem, used on SCO OpenServer ISO 9660 – Used on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM discs (Rock Ridge and Joliet are extensions to this) JFS – IBM Journaling file system, provided in Linux, OS/2, and AIX. Supports extents. LFS – 4.4BSD implementation of a log-structured file system MFS – Macintosh File System, used on early Classic Mac OS systems. Succeeded by Hierarchical File System (HFS). Next3 – A form of ext3 with snapshots support. MFS – TiVo's Media File System, a proprietary fault tolerant format used on TiVo hard drives for real time recording from live TV. Minix file system – Used on Minix systems NILFS – Linux implementation of a log-structured file system NTFS – (New Technology File System) Used on Microsoft's Windows NT-based operating systems NeXT - NeXTstation and NeXTcube file system NetWare File System – The original NetWare 2.x–5.x file system, used optionally by later versions. NSS – Novell Storage Services. This is a new 64-bit journaling file system using a balanced tree algorithm. Used in NetWare versions 5.0-up and recently ported to Linux. OneFS – One File System. This is a fully journaled, distributed file system used by Isilon. OneFS uses FlexProtect and Reed–Solomon encodings to support up to four simultaneous disk failures. OFS – Old File System, on Amiga. Good for floppies, but fairly useless on hard drives. OS-9 file system PFS – and PFS2, PFS3, etc. Technically interesting file system available for the Amiga, performs very well under a lot of circumstances. ProDOS – Successor to DOS 3.x, for Apple II computers, including the IIgs Qnx4fs – File system that is used in QNX version 4 and 6. ReFS (Resilient File System) – File system by Microsoft with a particular focus on data resilience in server environments. ReiserFS – File system that uses journaling Reiser4 – File system that uses journaling, newest version of ReiserFS Reliance – Datalight's transactional file system for high reliability applications Reliance Nitro – Tree-based transactional, copy-on-write file system developed for high-performance embedded systems, from Datalight (Acquired by Tuxera in 2019) RFS – Native filesystem for RTEMS SkyFS – Developed for SkyOS to replace BFS as the operating system's main file system. It is based on BFS, but contains many new features. SFS – Smart File System, journaling file system available for the Amiga platforms. Soup (Apple) – the "file system" for Apple Newton Platform, structured as a shallow database Tux3 – An experimental versioning file system intended as a replacement for ext3 UDF – Packet-based file system for WORM/RW media such as CD-RW and DVD, now supports hard drives and flash memory as well. UFS – Unix File System, used on Solaris and older BSD systems UFS2 – Unix File System, used on newer BSD systems VxFS Veritas file system, first commercial journaling file system; HP-UX, Solaris, Linux, AIX, UnixWare VTOC (Volume Table Of Contents) - Data structure on IBM mainframe direct-access storage devices (DASD) such as disk drives that provides a way of locating the data sets that reside on the DASD volume. XFS – Used on SGI IRIX and Linux systems zFS – z/OS File System; not to be confused with other file systems named zFS or ZFS. zFS - an IBM research project to develop a distributed, decentralized file system; not to be confused with other file systems named zFS or ZFS. ZFS a combined file system and logical volume manager designed by Sun Microsystems
File systems with built-in fault-tolerance These file systems have built-in checksumming and either mirroring or parity for extra redundancy on one or several block devices: Bcachefs – Full data and metadata checksumming, bcache is the bottom half of the filesystem. Btrfs – A file system based on B-Trees, initially designed at Oracle Corporation. HAMMER and HAMMER2 – DragonFly BSD's primary filesystems, created by Matt Dillon. NOVA – The "non-volatile memory accelerated" file system for persistent main memory. ReFS (Resilient File System) – A file system by Microsoft with built-in resiliency features. Reliance – A transactional file system with CRCs, created by Datalight. Reliance Nitro – A tree-based transactional, copy-on-write file system with CRCs, developed for high performance and reliability in embedded systems, from Datalight (Acquired by Tuxera in 2019). ZFS – Has checksums for all data; important metadata is always redundant, additional redundancy levels are user-configurable; copy-on-write and transactional writing ensure metadata consistency; corrupted data can be automatically repaired if a redundant copy is available. Created by Sun Microsystems for use on Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris, ported to FreeBSD 7.0, NetBSD (as of August 2009), Linux and to FUSE (not to be confused with the two zFSes from IBM)
File systems optimized for flash memory, solid state media
Solid state media, such as flash memory, are similar to disks in their interfaces, but have different problems. At low level, they require special handling such as wear leveling and different error detection and correction algorithms. Typically a device such as a solid-state drive handles such operations internally and therefore a regular file system can be used. However, for certain specialized installations (embedded systems, industrial applications) a file system optimized for plain flash memory is advantageous.
Many, but not all, file systems optimized for flash memory support TRIM commands to tell the storage device that certain blocks are no longer in use and can be reused.
3FS – (Fire-Flyer File System) is a File System made by DeepSeek designed for AI Training and Inference workloads. APFS – Apple File System is a next-generation file system for Apple products. CHFS – a NetBSD filesystem for embedded systems optimised for raw flash media. exFAT – Microsoft file system intended for flash cards (see also XCFiles, an exFAT implementation for Wind River VxWorks and other embedded operating systems). Does not support TRIM on Windows. Supports TRIM on Linux. ExtremeFFS – internal filesystem for SSDs. F2FS – Flash-Friendly File System. An open source Linux file system introduced by Samsung in 2012. FFS2 (presumably preceded by FFS1), one of the earliest flash file systems. Developed and patented by Microsoft in the early 1990s. JFFS – original log structured Linux file system for NOR flash media. JFFS2 – successor of JFFS, for NAND and NOR flash. LSFS – a Log-structured file system with writable snapshots and inline data deduplication created by StarWind Software. Uses DRAM and flash to cache spinning disks. LogFS – intended to replace JFFS2, better scalability. No longer under active development. NILFS – a log-structured file system for Linux with continuous snapshots. Non-Volatile File System – the system for flash memory introduced by Palm, Inc. NOVA – the "non-volatile memory accelerated" file system for persistent main memory. OneFS – a filesystem utilized by Isilon. It supports selective placement of meta-data directly onto flash SSD. Reliance Velocity - a proprietary flash file system by Tuxera with high resilience (fail-safe technology) and built-in data integrity. This file system is best suited for embedded applications requiring heavy data workloads over long-term operations. Reliance Velocity can used for all block based media like eMMC, UFS, eSD, SD card, CF card, and SSD. It is compatible for Linux, Android and QNX with portability to other embedded operating systems. Reliance Edge - a proprietary file system by Tuxera for resource-constrained embedded systems. It has built-in data integrity with copy-on-write transactional technology and deterministic operations. This file system can be used for block based media and is configurable for Small POSIX, Full POSIX and can be ported to many RTOS environments. Tuxera has a certified version of this file system called Reliance Assure. The source code of Reliance Assure is complaint to MISRA C and developed following the ASPICE framework.