I N N O V A T I O N: April 2008

Introduction to the two file Systems

Both windows and Solaris allows deletion & creation of files access to files for reading or writing , perform automatic management of secondary memory space and protect files against system failure thus there are many similarities and dissimilarities between the two file systems and they are described in the following article.

Different file systems

Solaris 10 uses ZFS file system and Windows uses NTFS file system.

ZFS, which doesn't stand for anything. It is just a pseudo-acronym that vaguely suggests a way to store files that gets you a lot of points in Scrabble and is used in Solaris 10. [Jeff Bonwick,2006]

Unlike ZFS, NTFS stands for New Technology File System and is used in Windows XP.

NTFS is designed as a better alternative to FAT 32.

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ZFS of Solaris 10 UNIX file Management System

ZFS produced by Sun Micro System and it is an open source file system. Its high capacity and integration of the previously separate concept of file system and volume management in to a single product, novel on disk structure, light weight file system and easy storage pool management. ZFS has 2 main features. ZFS is a 128 bit file system. The report which has been reference to Wikipedia which was referenced in 2006 states the capacity of ZFS as 129 bits; where as in Jeff Bonwick's Blog (who was the project leader of ZFS) states that ZFS is a 128 bit file system. [SunSolaris2008]

ZFS can store 256 quadrillion ZB (1ZB = 1 billion TB or 1 ZB = 2⁷⁰ bytes), which Exceeds quantum limit of Earth-based storage.[opensolaris2006]

Unlike Sun Microsystems, Microsoft who is the developer NTFS is not providing this file system free as it is not an open source file system.

The maximum NTFS volume size as implemented in Windows XP Professional is 232-1 clusters. For example, using 64 KiB clusters, the maximum NTFS volume size is 256 TiB minus 64 KiB [Wikipedia2008]. Compared with ZFS, NTFS can be regarded as having a minute storage capacity.

Windows current file system NTFS can store files up to 4GB in size. Unlike NTFS, ZFS has no theoretical limit for a single file, but the whole file system can be as big as 256 quadrillion ZB as stated above. [Zamwi2007]

When comparing the storage levels of ZFS and NTFS I rather prefer ZFS not only considering its storage levels but also as it is open source.

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NTFS of the windows XP file management system

NTFS is used in Windows NT family (Windows NT 3.1 to Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008). [wikipedia2008].

NTFS can also be used in Linux with NTFS-3g, Mac OS with Paragon NTFS and ntfs-3g, Mac OS X with NTFS-3g and FreeBSD with NTFS-3g, BeOS with NTFS-3g [wikipedia2008].

ZFS which is the next generation file system could be used in Linux with FUSE, Mac OS X with Read/Write Developer Preview, FreeBSD and Solaris [wikipedia2008].

It is clear that NTFS supports most of the older OS like Windows NT and most of its family members etc. and NTFS were developed primarily as a modification of FAT 32. [pcmag2007]

In NTFS metafiles, define files, back up critical file system data, buffer file system changes, manage free space allocation, satisfy BIOS expectations, and track bad allocation units, and store security and disk space usage information.

It also Stores file owner, POSIX file permission, Creation timestamps, last access/read timestamps, Last metadata change timestamps, Access control lists, security/MAC labels, extended attributes/alternative data streams/forks and where as ZFS Stores file owner, POSIX file permissions, Creation timestamps, Last access/ read timestamps, Last metadata change timestamps, Last archive timestamps, Access control lists, Extended attributes/ Alternate data streams/ forks, Checksum/ ECC [wikipedia2008].

comparing the 2 paragraphs written above it states that the last archive timestamp is not stored in NTFS and where in ZFS the last archive timestamp is been recorded.

ZFS is considered as 100% dynamic in metadata because it has No limits on files, directory entries, etc. and No wacky knobs [opensolaris2006].

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Comparison and Contrast of ZFS and NTFS

NTFS has its Maximum filename length as 255 bytes, allowable characters in directory entriesare any Unicode except for NULL, Maximum pathname length stands at 32,767 Unicode characters with each path component (directory or filename) up to 255 characters long, Maximum file size is 16 KB and the Maximum volume size is 16 KB [wikipedia2008].

ZFS has its Maximum filename length as 255 bytes, allowable characters in directory entriesare any Unicode except for NULL, Maximum pathname length has no limit defined, Maximum file size is 16 KB and the Maximum volume size is 16 KB [wikipedia2008].

The two has some similarities as shown above but ZFS has a unique feature that its maximum file name length has no limit and thus again ensures as a more precedence when compared with NTFS.

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Naming Rules of the two file management system

Directory or Folder

What Solaris calls directory, windows XP calls it as a folder. This is an important comparison between the 2 file systems as it uses different terms.

Both file systems contain folders or directories (depending on what they call it) which in turn contain directories or folders. This is called hierarchical file system and is found in both file systems.

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Directories / Folder Separator

Solaris uses the “ / “ Back slash as a delimiter and Windows XP uses “ \ “ forward slash as the delimiter. This is another distinguishable feature when comparing the 2 file systems.

In Solaris the root of the file system is depicted as “ / “. E.g. /home/eland/u2/klo33/file1

And in windows XP the root is always the physical drive. Windows support a notation of drive letters. E.g. C:\ , D:\, E:\

e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\asus\My Documents\1 SHAMIL IIT

I personally find it difficult to remember the drives which I have stored a file as windows physical drives uses adjacent characters like C, D, E etc. I usually get lost in finding a file in these drives. When using the UNIX file System, what I found interesting was that it always start with the root and had a particular sequence in addressing as /home/…. .

Extracting from the article posted by Barbara, (which appears in the document provided) it states that;

In windows XP the file names could be 254 characters long, while the file names in the UNIX could be 1023 characters long. [Babara2005].

But an article posted by IBM states that a path name identifies a file thus consists of directory names and a file name. A fully qualified file name, which consists of the name of each directory in the path to a file plus the file name itself, can be up to 1023 bytes long.

A UNIX file name could not alone hold a file name which is 1023 long thus it could hold 1023 characters with the full path name identifier of the file which consist of file name, directory name and etc. [publibIBM2006]

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File organization and directory structure

UNIX has no concept of separate identifier for file partitions. So the Solaris UNIX use a network shared resource as its root directory.

Windows has a concept of separate identifier for file partitions. C, D, E etc.

As I mentioned before, in windows, remembering the location where the file is located can be difficult as I have to remember, in which file partition I stored the file and thus the names of the file partitions are adjacent characters in the alphabet, so could make errors when typing an address.

I node in UNIX Solaris system stores basic information about a file, directory or other file system object. The file system maintains one I node table to keep track of any files placed on disk, and it can be seen as a sort of “index”.[wikipedia2006].

In windows XP metadata stores information on file owner, creation timestamps, last access/read timestamps, last metadata change timestamps, to access control time list.

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Methods of Files and Directory access.

Solaris UNIX file and directory allows 3 primary types of data access control, they are user ,group and others .

total 3

-rw------- 1 leej 314 2 Jul 20 14:17 fredy

drwx--x--x 7 leej 314 512 Mar 2 12:45 publickill

drwx------ 10 leej 314 512 Jul 21 15:09 wordy

the column from left to write represents permissions (user,group,others) , number of links to file, owner, file owners group, size bytes, access date, time of last modified and file name.

Each user who creates a file can give read, write and execute permission to that file.

NTFS file permissions are used to control the access that a user, group, or application has to files. This includes everything from reading a file to modifying and executing the file. There are five NTFS file permissions read, write, Read & Execute, modify and full control.

[windowssitlibrary2005]

Granting and removing file permissions in UNIX is easy as users should only give in read, write and execute permission to user, group, others. Granting or removing permission is relatively easy as the user should type in a simple chmod command, where as in windows there are 5 types of permissions and it provides the same function where as UNIX provides.

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Types of files in the Solaris UNIX and Windows XP

In both Solaris and Windows the file is considered as the basic unit, both of them have similar kinds of files but in Solaris UNIX there exist links and symbolic links and special files which are not found in Windows.

Windows contain links and short cuts. These are considered to be unique to Windows and not found in Solaris UNIX.

Special file is an interface for a device driver that appears in a file system as if it were an ordinary file. This allows software to interact with the device driver using standard input/output system calls, which simplifies tasks [wikipedia2008]. And this is peculiar to the Solaris UNIX file system.

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The meaning of file extensions

Windows file System consist of a base name, optionally followed by a dot and a filename extension of one to three characters e.g. test.cpp . the unix file system has no special rule as windows but could have more than one file extension such as .tar.gz Tarred-then-gzipped files [kb2007]. Or Docs.tar.zip

This style of multiple file name extension can’t be done in Windows. These multiple file name extension gives more detail to the document. For example .tar.gz file extension tells us that the document is Tarred-then-gzipped .

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File and Disk Fragmentation

ZFS file systems can be dynamically resized; they can grow or shrink as needed. The allocation

Algorithms are such that defragmentation is not an issue. ZFS keeps fragmentation to its minimum by writing related data blocks within the same cylinder group thus reduce seek time when the files are accessed. [sun2005]

In Windows NTFS when saving, files and folders get saved in pieces in different part of physical storage results in slowing the computers file input and output performance. I find this annoying as it makes much time in saving and retrieving files and ZFS has overcome this issue by keeping fragmentation to its minimum thus reducing seek time.

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Finally as a summary ……….

The limitations of ZFS are designed to be so large that they will never be encountered in any practical operation. ZFS can store 16 Exabytes in each storage pool, file system, file, or file attribute. ZFS can store billions of names: files or directories in a directory, file systems in a file system, or snapshots of a file system. ZFS can store trillions of items: files in a file system, file systems, volumes, or snapshots in a pool. [opensolaris2006]

ZFS Pooled storage Up to 248 datasets per pool – file systems, iSCSI targets, swap, etc and File systems become administrative control points

ZFS has been subjected to over a million forced, violent crashes without losing data integrity or leaking a single block. [opensolaris2006]

These can’t be expected in NTFS thus ZFS was designed for robust, security and etc. and users find it difficult to use it and I suggest if Sun Microsystems could make it more user friendly as Windows it would make it more popular among people, but by considering all the facts mentioned above I’ll always stay with ZFS, because I consider it as the next generation file system !

Please make sure you got 100% on the difference of the two file system, send me a comment on this article so that i can improve my self.

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References

Opensolaris- ZFS file system

http://opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/faq/ [accessed 14 April]

Opensolaris- ZFS Solaris file system

http://www.sun.com/emrkt/campaign_docs/expertexchange/knowledge/solaris_zfs.pdf [accessed 14 April]

NTFS file system

http://kb.iu.edu/data/affo.html [accessed 12 April]

NTFS nest generation file system

http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/Content/592/1.html [accessed 14 April]

[ZFS ]