What is NTFS (New Tech­no­logy File System)?

The ab­bre­vi­ation “NTFS” stands for “New Tech­no­logy File System.” Thanks to the dominance of Microsoft, NTFS is a wide­spread file system for or­gan­ising data on hard drives and other data media. As of the release of Windows XP in 2001, the file system has been the un­con­tested standard for Windows operating systems. Read on and find out how it works, what benefits it offers, and how it differs from other systems like FAT.

The maximum size of a partition for the NTFS file system is around 2 terabytes. However, there are no size re­stric­tions for an in­di­vidu­al file. So it’s the­or­et­ic­ally possible to store one file of almost 2 terabytes in size on a data storage medium formatted with NTFS. Compared to classic file systems like FAT32, the “cluster size” in NTFS has been expanded con­sid­er­ably and now ap­proaches 16x10^18. For the FAT32 file system, the cluster size is “only” 4,294,987,296. A file name may be at most 255 char­ac­ters long according to the NTFS standard.

NTFS follows the principle: “Everything is in a file.” By contrast, other file systems – such as Unix operating systems – work according to the principle: “Everything is a file.” In the case of NTFS, all in­form­a­tion on all saved files is stored in the MFT (master file table). Among other things, this index contains in­form­a­tion about which blocks in the storage media belong to which file and which access au­thor­isa­tions and at­trib­utes are assigned to a certain file. With the NTFS file system, the master file table stores at­trib­utes like file type, file size, the date of creation and most recent changes, for example. The MFT ac­cord­ingly enjoys a special position on NTFS-formatted data storage devices. This integral component typically occupies 12.5% of the partition size and can’t be filled with other files. The frag­ment­a­tion of the data medium starts as soon as the MFT is com­pletely filled with data.

In the last three decades, Microsoft has revised its pro­pri­et­ary file system standard on a regular basis. However, most of the released NTFS versions are no longer relevant due to the outdated operating systems they are assigned to. The following table sum­mar­ises the basic in­form­a­tion about the in­di­vidu­al versions:

As of Windows XP, NTFS has been pre­dom­in­antly used in Microsoft systems. NTFS format­ting on the hard drive that contains the operating system has even been ob­lig­at­ory as of Windows Vista. This makes sense because NTFS offers a number of sub­stan­tial ad­vant­ages over FAT pre­de­cessors like FAT32 or FAT16.

In general, the NTFS file system is par­tic­u­larly well-suited to use in networks. This is where it can fully utilise its well-organised structure including practical access controls for user read and write rights. Compared to the previous standard FAT32, which is still in use for certain purposes nowadays, NTFS offers further ad­vant­ages: The maximum size of a partition is far larger and now amounts to around 16 terabytes. This rep­res­ents a storage size that is still (as of 2020) only reached by few hard drives available on the market – re­gard­less of whether they’re classic mech­an­ic­al HDD drives or modern SSD flash storage media. To il­lus­trate the im­port­ance of the file system more ef­fect­ively, below you will find a summary of the ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages of NTFS for private and business users.

NTFS is able to write smaller files much faster than a file system like FAT32. Moreover, the file size is not limited. By in­tel­li­gently selecting the sectors to be written, the file system reduces the problem of frag­ment­a­tion and minimises the need for constant de­frag­ment­a­tion. Data is lost less fre­quently with NTFS, because the file system re­cog­nises damaged sectors faster and removes the files stored there.

Thanks to NTFS, ad­di­tion­al in­form­a­tion besides the file name can also be stored – with a size of 64 kibibytes (KiB).

The metadata stored in this way clearly shows which programs can be used to open a file, for example. What’s more, the metadata has the positive side effect that spe­cify­ing the file ending is no longer required in NTFS. A “journal” is main­tained for all metadata. Here, planned action is first entered in the journal before the actual write access is performed and the journal is then updated. This allows in­con­sist­en­cies to be avoided to a large extent. Even in the event of a crash or power outage, only the journal needs to be correct.

NTFS has been the ob­lig­at­ory file system for Windows systems since Windows Vista. However, the file system plays no role in mobile storage media like external HDDs or SDDs, USB sticks, or memory cards. These data media belong to the domain of file systems with the classic File Al­loc­a­tion Table (FAT) like FAT32 and its successor exFAT.

The question “What is NTFS?” is not often raised for Apple computer users, since the pro­pri­et­ary Microsoft standard is not com­pat­ible with the com­pet­it­or’s tech­no­logy. Data exchange between Macs and PCs, therefore, occurs via data media that are formatted with com­pat­ible file systems like FAT32 or exFAT. Mul­ti­me­dia end devices such as game consoles or players also require FAT data media in order to detect, display, and play back the data.