NT1410 exercise 3-1

Windows, Fedora 20, and Android offer different styles of file systems. With Windows and Linux primarily being used on desktop computers, the amount of storage as well as the overall performance is better than Android file systems. Android still puts up a good fight considering it is mainly tablet and smartphone based. Let’s explore these filing systems for these three power houses in this computer based era.

Windows file system has been around for a very long time and with age comes the ability to fine tune their file systems. There are 3 different file systems available for Windows. They are NTFS, FAT32, and FAT or FAT16. The NTFS is the preferred system due to its many benefits. The NTFS offers the user the ability to recover from some disk related errors automatically, improves support for larger hard disk, as well as has a better security because you can set permissions as well as encryptions to keep files safe. NTFS was introduced in Windows NT and at present is major file system for Windows. This is a default file system for disk partitions and the only file system that is fortified for disk partitions over 32GB. The file system is quite extensible and fortifies many file properties, including access control, encryption etc. Each file on NTFS is stored as file descriptor in Master File Table and file content. Master file table contains all information about the file: size, allocation, name etc. The first and the last sectors of the file system contain file system settings (boot record or superblock). This file system uses 48 and 64 bit values to reference files, thus fortifying quite astronomically immense disk storages.

Linux or Fedora filing system is also unique to its brand. It current is able to support the following filing systems:
Ext2: This is like UNIX file system. It has the concepts of blocks, inodes and directories. Ext3: It is ext2 filesystem enhanced with journaling capabilities. Journaling sanctions expeditious file system instauration. Fortifies POSIX ACL (Access Control Lists). Isofs (iso9660): Utilized by CDROM file system. Sysfs: It is a ram-predicated filesystem initially predicated on ramfs. It is use to exporting kernel objects so that end utilizer can utilize it facilely.
Procfs: The proc file system acts as an interface to internal data structures in the kernel. It can be acclimated to obtain information about the system and to transmute certain kernel parameters at runtime utilizing sysctl command.

With Linux (Fedora) being open source, file systems can be tweaked and changed to how the end user prefers. I believe this makes the Linux file system the most user friendly, if you are tech savvy enough to make it meet your needs.

The Android file system is sort of like Linux. Since Android is also open source as well as specific to the cellphone and tablet makers the file system can be changed while staying with some core values. All Android contrivances have two file storage areas: "internal" and "external" storage. These denominations emanate from the early days of Android, when most contrivances offered built-in non-volatile recollection (internal storage), plus a removable storage medium such as a micro SD card (external storage). Some contrivances divide perpetual storage space into "internal" and "external" partitions, so even without a removable storage medium, there are always two storage spaces and the API demeanor is identically tantamount whether the external storage is removable or not. The following lists summarize the facts about each storage space. If you ken ahead of time how much data you're preserving, you can ascertain whether sufficient space is available without causing an IO Exception by calling getFreeSpace() or getTotalSpace(). These methods provide the current available space and the total space in the storage volume, respectively. This information is withal utilizable to eschew filling the storage volume above a certain threshold. However, the system does not assure that you can indite as many bytes as are betokened by getFreeSpace(). If the number returned is a few MB more than the size of the data you optate to preserve, or if the file system is less than 90% plenary, then it's probably safe to proceed. Otherwise, you probably shouldn't indicted to storage.

Note: You aren't required to check the amount of available space afore you preserve your file. You can instead endeavor indenting the file right away, then catch an IO Exception if one occurs. You may need to do this if you don't ken precisely how much space you require. For example, if you transmute the files encoding afore you preserve it by converting a PNG image to JPEG, you won't ken the file's size beforehand.

The ultimate determination to a file system being user friendly is dependent on the end user. Some people may prefer the layout of the Windows file system over Fedora, or prefer the Android OS (which includes the file system) or the Apple OS and their filing system. Generally if a user has used one OS over another they will become dependent on what if offers, and ignore the potential perks to switching to something else. All three of the filing systems we have discussed above have been proven to be stable, reliable, and storage performance. The only one that is restricted on storage space is Android, but it can be bypassed with an external hard drive.

Work Citied:
Site visited: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/termsf/g/file-definition.htm
Title: File: Definition of a file, written by: Tim Fisher. Accessed on Oct-10-2015

Site visited: http://developer.android.com/training/basics/data-storage/files.html
Android Development. Accessed on Oct-10-2015 By Ryan Alani

Site Visited: http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/understanding-unixlinux-file-system-part-i.html
Title: Understanding UNIX/LINUX File System, written by: Vivek Gite on November 7, 2005. Accessed on Oct-10-2015

Site visited: http://www.ufsexplorer.com/und_fs.php
Title: Understanding File System. Accessed by: Ryan Alani on OCT-11-2015