File Systems

Partition Schemas

File Systems Overview

Name Partition size (min/max) Cluster size (min/max) File Max Size fstab code FAT16 16Mb/2Gb 2Kb/32Kb FAT32 32 KB (officially), 512 bytes (unofficially)- 2Tb 🔍 512b - 32Kb/64Kb (for large volumes) NTFS 1.

APFS

APFS APM and APFS seem to be unable to live together. APFS requires GUID. I have come to that conclusion when I tried formating the drive with a APM and then APFS with DiskUtility.

ExtX

2 No journaling 3 Same but + journaling 4 New FS

FAT

Any FAT partition has two main parts: system area and data area. System area contains FAT boot record (every file system has a boot record), 1st FAT and 2nd FAT.

HFS and HFS+

HFS HFS+ Since 1998, since macOS 8.1. Was replaced by APFS. Didn’t natively support full disk encryption (FV2 was added later).

NTFS

Developed in collaboration with IBM. POSIX compliant. Official docs for NTFS here. ❗️ Everything is a file!

ReiserFS

Allows storing multiple files in a single sector. exclamation mark ❗️Unique to this FS!

XFS

Good for multimedia files.

Flash Memory Overview

In this article I’m going to give a general overview of how SSD works and how it’s different from an HDD.

HDD Overview

In this article I’m going to give a general overview of how HDDs work. Floppy Floppy disks 💾 are like dinosaurs 🦕.