User Guide

Acronis TrueImage Deluxe 85
Other operating systems provide hard disk formatting means to create file systems
that are recognizable by these OSes.
A.7 File Systems
The logical structure that has been created on the hard disk is supported by
means of operating system. The file system itself presents the information on
the disk as an ensemble of files and folders.
From the user’s point of view a file is a unit of storage of logically connected
information: text, graphics, and sound. As for data storage organization, a file is
a chain of connected sectors or clusters. A cluster is a unit of several sectors.
(Sectors are characteristic for file systems supported by various versions of
Windows.)
Operating systems support file systems on hard disks (or disk partitions) by
allowing to create, copy, and delete files and folders.
At present, the most widely spread file systems for PCs are the following two:
• FAT (File Allocation Table) for DOS, OS/2, Windows 95/ 98/Me/NT/2000;
• NTFS (Windows NT File System) for Windows NT/2000.
However, there are many more other file systems. The Linux operating
system, for example, uses three different file systems:
• Ext2 is a common file system used on desktop PCs running Linux;
• Ext3 is the default file system used by Red Hat Linux;
• ReiserFS is a more secure (with respect to data integrity) file system that
is used on many Linux data servers.
• For details on file systems see Appendix A. «General Information. Hard
Disks».