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 or­ga­niz­ing 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 au­tho­riza­tions 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 sum­ma­rizes 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 utilize its well-organized 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 minimizes the need for constant de­frag­men­ta­tion. Data is lost less fre­quent­ly with NTFS, because the file system rec­og­nizes 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.