File Systems are used by operating systems to organize data on a hard drive or storage device. Much like the alpha/numeric system of storing paper files. The most common file system in use today are NTFS and FAT32. Data Mechanix not only excels at recovering data from NTFS and FAT32 file systems, but many others too. If your storage device uses a file system not listed here, don’t worry. Our capable staff will leverage their knowledge and experience to recover data from any file system.

• ADFS – Acorn’s Advanced Disc filing system, successor to DFS.
• AFS – Acer Fast Filesystem, used on SCO OpenServer.
• AthFS – AtheOS File System, a 64-bit journaled filesystem now used by Syllable. Also called AFS.
• BFS – the Be File System used on BeOS, occasionally misnamed as BeFS.
• DTFS – Desktop File System, featuring file compression, used by SCO OpenServer.
• EAFS – Extended Acer Fast Filesystem, used on SCO OpenServer.
• Extent File System (EFS) – an older block filing system under IRIX.
• ext – Extended file system, designed for Linux systems.
• ext2 – Second extended file system, designed for Linux systems.
• ext3 – A journalled form of ext2.
• ext3cow – A versioning file system form of ext3.
• ext4 – A new version of ext3, with support for extents.
• FAT – File Allocation Table, used on DOS and Microsoft Windows, 12-, 16- and 32-bit table depths. Compare VFAT.
• FFS (Amiga) – Fast File System, used on Amiga systems. This FS has evolved over time. Now counts FFS1, FFS Intl, FFS DCache, FFS2.
• FFS – Fast File System, used on BSD systems.
• Fossil – Plan 9 from Bell Labs snapshot archival file system.
• Files-11 – OpenVMS file system; also used on some PDP-11 systems; supports record-orientated files.
• HFS – Hierarchical File System, used on older Mac OS systems.
• HFS Plus – Updated version of HFS, used on newer Mac OS systems. Recent versions allow journaling.
• HPFS – High Performance File System, used on OS/2.
• HTFS – High Throughput Filesystem, used on SCO OpenServer.
• ISO 9660 – Used on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM discs (Rock Ridge and Joliet are extensions to this).
• JFS – IBM Journaling file system, provided in Linux, OS/2, and AIX. Supports extents.
• LFS – 4.4BSD implementation of a log-structured file system.
• MFS – Macintosh File System, used on early Mac OS systems.
• Minix file system – Used on Minix systems.
• NILFS – Linux implementation of a log-structured file system.
• NTFS – Used on Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista systems.
• NetWare File System – The original NetWare 2.x – 5.x file system, used optionnally by later versions.
• NSS – Novell Storage Services. This is a new 64-bit journaling file system using a balanced tree algorithm. Used in NetWare versions 5.0-up and recently ported to Linux.
• OFS – Old File System, on Amiga. Nice for floppies, but fairly useless on hard drives.
• PFS – and PFS2, PFS3, etc. Technically interesting file system available for the Amiga, performs very well under a lot of circumstances. Very simple and elegant.
• Qnx4fs – File system that used in QNX.
• ReiserFS – File system that uses journaling.
• Reiser4 – File system that uses journaling, newest version of ReiserFS.
• S51K – AT&T UNIX System V 1KB Filesystem, used by SCO OpenServer.
• SFS – Smart File System, journaling file system available for the Amiga platforms.
• SkyFS – Developed for SkyOS to replace BeFS as the operating system’s main file system. It is based off BeFS, but contains many new features.
• UDF – Packet based file system for WORM/RW media such as CD-RW and DVD.
• UFS – Unix File System, used on older BSD systems.
• UFS2 – Unix File System, used on newer BSD systems.
• VxFS – Veritas file system, first commercial journaling file system; HP-UX, Solaris, Linux, AIX.
• WinFS – Windows Future Storage, currently still in beta and in use internally at Microsoft, it is planned as the successor to NTFS. It is uncertain whether it will be available as a service pack for Windows Vista or if it will be shipped with a later version of Windows.
• WAFL – Write Anywhere File Layout. High performance, log-structured like file system. WAFL heavily uses RAID 4, and NVRAM for transaction log replays. Used on Network Appliance systems.
• XFS – Used on SGI IRIX and Linux systems.
• ZFS – Used on Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris (not to be confused with zFS from IBM).

Encrypted File Systems:

• Secure Shell File System (SSHFS) – locally mount a remote directory on a server using only a secure shell login.
• EncFS, GPL Encrypted file system in user-space.
• Rubberhose filesystem.
• PhoneBookFS.
• EFS – Encrypted file system for Microsoft Windows systems. An extension of NTFS.
• FSFS – Fast Secure File System Project Home page.

Fault Tolerant File Systems:

• RAIF Redundant Array of Independent Filesystems – stackable RAID-like file system.
• Datalight Reliance ™ – transactional file system for 32 bit embedded systems from Datalght, Inc.