Under Construction

OS Win 95/98
Win 2000+
Mac OS 1986
Mac OS 9
Mac OS X
Unix/Linux
File System . FAT 32 NTFS HFS HFS +1 HFS+/UFS UFS
Max Char. 255 256 31 31 255 255
Max Path. 260 260        
Restricted "/\*?<>|: "/\*?<>|: : : /: / Space /
Directory Separator \ \ : : : /
Case Sensitivity NO NO NO NO NO YES
Mac OSX ‡ r/w r r/w r/w r/w ?
Windows *
2000, XP, ...
r/w r/w NO NO NO YES
Max File size 4GB 16EB 2GB 16EB 16EB  
Max Volume size 2TB 16EB 2TB 16EB 16EB  
1. HFS + is also referred to as Mac OS Extended
* Mac HFS + drives can be read with third party software like MacDrive File systems are used for formatting intrrnal and external attached hard disks and memory cards.

‡ NTFS drives can be read and written with PARAGON's - NTFS for Mac

FAT 32 - File Allocation Table
- Windows 95/98
It is a open protocol readable and writable on both Macs and
exFAT - Extended File Allocation Table
- exFAT can be used where the NTFS file system is not a feasible solution (due to data structure overhead), or where the file size limit of the standard FAT32 file system is unacceptable.
NTFS
NT (Windows New Technology) File system. Windows 2000+
HFS + Hierarchical Filesystem
Apple Mac File system. Also referred to as Mac OS Extended.
Similar to HFS with the addition of:
Format options with OS X 10.6 are:
Extended (Journaled)
Extended
Extended (Case-Sensative, Journaled)
Extended (Case-Sensative)
MS-DOS (FAT)
See: HFS Plus - Wikipedia,
UFS - Unix File System
Unix File System.
ext2 - extended file system
Second extended file system - a file system for the Linux kernel (no journaling).
ext3
Third extended file system is a file system for the Linux kernel with journaling.
ODS-5 - on-disk structure
Used by Hewlett-Packard's OpenVMS operating system. Descended from older DEC operating systems. ODS-5 is an extended version of ODS-2 available on Alpha and Itanium. It was originally intended for file serving to Microsoft Windows or other non-VMS systems.
ISO 9660
A file system for CD-ROM media. (May also be used for DVDs but UDF is more common)
UDF - Universal Disk Format
- Vendor-independent file system for optical media. ISO/IEC 13346 (also known as ECMA-167) defined by Optical Technology Storage Association (OTSA).
A successor of ISO 9660
May also be used for Flash media larger than 32 GB.
Network File System Protocols: Network File systems are the client-server protocols for accessing files over a shared network. The disks or volumes (partitions on a disk) may appear to be connected directly to your computer, but they actually reside someplace on a network, either connected to another computer or a network .
NFS - Network File System
Unix - originally developed by Sun Microsystems in 1984.
The de facto standard for Unix filesharing
SMB - Server Message Block
Windows. cross-platform protocol for distributed file sharing.
CIFS - Common Internet File System
An enhanced extension of SMB
AFP - Apple Filing Protocol
he equivalent of CIFS for Macintoshes.
AFS - Andrew File System
A distributed networked file system developed by Carnegie Mellon University as part of the Andrew Project.
NCP - NetWare Core Protocol or Netware Client Protocol
Novelle NetWare
DFS - Distributed File System
OFS standard derived from AFS.
NetBEUI
WINS
DFS nor AFS have not achieved any major commercial success as compared to NFS.
The OpenAFS project lives on.

See Also:
Sharing Disks - Windows Products
Network Operating Systems.

Mac/PC compatibility:
For the most flexibility format a drive as Fat 32 so it can be used in read/write mode on both PC's and Macs. Macs will leave FINDER.DAT files and newer versions of windows may leave thumbs.db files on the disk.
Mac OS cannot recognize or use the full capacity of a FAT 32 formatted drive larger than 127GB.

You can read NTFS drives from the Mac and (with Macdrive) read the HFS+ from Windows.

2K/XP only allows you to format a 32gig FAT32 partition, even though it can access a FAT32 partition of any size. I normally use Partition Magic to format if I need FAT32 volumes larger than 32gig.

Application-specific protocols:
Internet-oriented messaging protocols:
  POP - Post Office Protocol RFC-918, POP3 - RFC-1725
  DMSP - Distributed Mail System Protocol. RFC-984
  IMAP - Internet Message Access Protocol (RFC-1730)
  X.400 - OSI standard developed by the ITU-T (at the time the CCITT) in cooperation with ISO

Secure transaction protocols:
SSL/TLS - Secure Socket Layer - Tranport Layer Security (X.509 certificate)
S/MIME - Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (X.509 certificate)
PGP - Pretty Good Privacy
HTTPS - Secure hypertext transfer protocol(X.509 certificate)
IPSEC - IP security at the Network Layer (X.509 certificate)

VPN - Virtual Private Networks:
IPsec - IP security - with encryption
L2TP - Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol
SSL - Secure Socket Layer with encryption
PPTP point-to-point tunneling protocol
See VPN

Authentication, authorization and accounting protocols:
RADIUS - Remote Authentication Dial In User Service.
TACACS - Terminal Access Controller Access Control System.

User Directory Protoclos:
NIS: The Network Information Service (NIS) protocol, originally named Yellow Pages (YP) was Sun Microsystems implementation
Active Directory: Microsoft's directory service is included in the Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003.
LDAP - Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
DAP (Directory Access Protocol) (X.500)
DSP (Directory System Protocol) (X.500)

There are many more.
See:
Ports
WAN and LAN protocol Directory

See Also:
File Systems at: comentum.com
Wikipedia.org


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last updated 4 Sep 2005