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File System Functionality Comparison

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The following tables list functionality and feature support comparisons for the four main Windows file systems, NTFS, exFAT, UDF, and FAT32:

Functionality

Feature NTFS exFAT UDF FAT32
Creation time stamps
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
Last access time stamps
 No (see note below)
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes (date only)
Last change time stamps
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
Last archive time stamps
 No
 No
 No
 No
Case-sensitive
 Yes (option)
 No
 Yes
 No
Case-preserving
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
Hard links
 Yes
 No
 Yes
 No
Soft links
 Yes
 No
 No
 No
Sparse files
 Yes
 No
 Yes
 No
Named streams
 Yes
 No
 Yes
 No
Oplocks
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
Extended attributes
 Yes
 No
 Yes (on-disk only)
 No
Alternate data streams
 Yes
 No
 Yes
 No
Mount points
 Yes
 No
 No
 No

Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP: The NTFS last access time stamp field is updated.

Limits

Feature NTFS exFAT UDF FAT32
Maximum file name length
 255 Unicode characters
 255 Unicode characters
 127 Unicode or 254 ASCII characters
 255 Unicode characters
Maximum path name length
 32,760 Unicode characters with each path component no more than 255 characters
 32,760 Unicode characters with each path component no more than 255 characters
 32,760 Unicode characters with each path component no more than 255 characters
 32,760 Unicode characters with each path component no more than 255 characters
Maximum file size
 2^64–1 bytes
 2^64–1 bytes
 2^64–1 bytes
 4 GiB
Maximum volume size
 16 TB (4 KB Cluster Size) or 256TB (64 KB Cluster Size)
 2^32–1 clusters (Maximum cluster size = 2^25–1)
 2^32 blocks
 2^32 blocks

Journaling and Change Log

Feature NTFS exFAT UDF FAT32
Metadata-only journaling
 Yes
 No
 No
 No
File change log
 Yes
 No
 No
 No

Block Allocation Features

Feature NTFS exFAT UDF FAT32
Tail packing
 Yes (small files are made resident in the MFT stream descriptor)
 No
 No
 No
Extents
 Yes
 No
 Yes
 No
Variable block size
 No (set by the volume)
 No
 No
 No

Security

Feature NTFS exFAT UDF FAT32
Track file owner
 Yes
 No
 No
 No
POSIX file permissions
 No (available in POSIX subsystem feature)
 No
 Yes
 No
Access control lists
 Yes
 No
 No
 No
File system level encryption
 Yes
 No
 No
 No
Checksum/ECC
 No
 Metadata
 Metadata
 No

Compression

Feature NTFS exFAT UDF FAT32
Built-in compression
 Yes
 No
 No
 No

Quotas

Feature NTFS exFAT UDF FAT32
User-level disk space
 Yes
 No
 No
 No
Directory-level disk space
 No (see note below)
 No
 No
 No

Note The directory-level disk space quotas feature on NTFS is available through the File Server Resource Manager.

Single-Instance Store

Feature NTFS exFAT UDF FAT32
File level
 No (see note below)
 No
 No
 No

Note Single-instance store for NTFS is available as part of the Single Instance Storage feature in Windows Server.

About File Management

Single-Instance Store and SIS Backup