One of the main drawbacks of Windows NTFS is that it requires defragmentation the more you use it. Linux, on the other hand does not.

Here is the classic comparison:

Your files are stored in a dresser with millions of drawers called sectors on the hard drive. Some files are so large that they may take 1,000 drawers. When you want to get something out, the system figures out where it is and then retrieves it.

Situation 1: You hire a man to store your files and he finds the first empty drawer and starts sticking files in there. Whenever he finds a full drawer, he skips it and goes to the next empty drawer. He keeps track on a piece of paper where the files are located. Every once in a while, when you complain that it's taking too long to find your files, you get a group of 12 boys to come over and rearrange your drawers so that they are all in order.
Situation 2: You hire a woman to organize your files. She keeps track on a piece of paper which drawers are full and which are empty. When a file comes in, she references her paper for the smallest area on which that file will fit. Then she places the file there. She skips the hiring of 12 boys in favor of better organization.
This is the difference between Windows and Linux.

Of course if the drive is full, either filesystem will fragment files. However, if you free up space and continue using the linux system it will defragment itself if you keep moving files around.

It seems to me that Linux is a small group of very bright people. It also seems to me that Microsoft is out-of-date with their filesystem technology.

What do you think? Could Microsoft release a NTFS2 which keeps track of contiguous blocks of hard disk space and avoids defrag all together?

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Comment by Adam N. Outler on June 20, 2010 at 3:06pm: That is the filesystem. It is the system the computer uses to access files. Linux puts it's own convention on top of that by utilizing symlinks. Ntfs requires defrag on Linux as well

Comment by Adam N. Outler on June 20, 2010 at 1:47pm: Oh.. Where I was going with that... Even the hard disks have a device. A computer should be viewed as a bunch of objects which work together as a machine. If there is a problem with a device driver or a method of formatting data, it should be addressed. The windows filesystem has a problem which requires the user to perform maintenance. So, the driver or the format should be addressed.

Maybe the problem is sloppy coding or multiple references in different methods... Of that's the case, why not rewrite the code neater so that windows can take advantage of modularity? I'm sure if windows were more modular, the filesystem could be plucked and replaced with any filesystem. It's all about standardized input and output. If you use only one method or a set of methods, then changing the system is as easy as changing those few methods.

Comment by Adam N. Outler on June 20, 2010 at 1:24pm: Ubuntu Linux comes ready to partition and run on almost any filesystem. I have my whole network of mac, windows and Linux mounted as folders on my Ubuntu filesystem. That can be attributed to the modularity of the Linux OS. Linux has all of it's I/Os in the /dev/ folder. You can read and write to any device by formatting the data properly... I can even port the /dev/random output device to the /dev/sound device and make static come out of the speakers. For best performance though, they recommend ext4 filesystem on Linux.

Don't get me wrong. I have a dual boot Ubuntu/win 7 netbook, a windows vista laptop, and a few windows virtual machines on my desktop. I also use windows at work.

By no means am I bashing here, but Linux is free and somehow people who are getting paid to do the work are not keeping up with those who want to do the work.

Comment by Mohamed Elsherif on June 20, 2010 at 9:40am: You can't expect an OS to run on all filesystems because every file system will support different features than the other and also performance will differ.
For example Windows XP supported FAT/FAT32/NTFS and the first two had performance issues and limitations on file size and drive size.

Comment by Justen on June 20, 2010 at 9:31am: Sexist! But yes, like all things Microsoft and proprietary, NTFS is inferior. I doubt they can switch because they have too much invested in the NTFS file system, but maybe they can update it on a future version to run a little cleaner. Here's a better question: why not run an OS where you can pick whatever filesystem you think serves your needs best? Why go with proprietary lock-in? If you're an average user, chances are you don't use your machine for one of the few things that "has" to be done in Windoz anyway.

Comment by Mohamed Elsherif on June 19, 2010 at 8:32pm: The NTFS filesystem went through different versions at least with every release of windows NTFS gets updated so it is not the same 90's filesystem

Comment by Adam N. Outler on June 19, 2010 at 1:50pm: Mohamed, reread everything and perform a logic test to see if your comment belongs here. This is not a comparison between filesystems. This is a statement about a antique filesystem which needs constant maintenance versus what is currently available. NTFS was designed near the dawn of multitasking before people were thinking in terms of objects. Back in what, 1997 or so? It is a crappy filesystem and there is no debating that it is out-of-date.

Usually when a piece of programming becomes obsolete, it gets modified. I'm wondering why NTFS is still the windows standard. It does not support modern filesystem usage. It is not elegant. It is a step above fat file storage.

NTFS supports reading and writing. It does not support deleting. When you delete files and then rewrite files it requires a tool to make things right again. Long term storage is one of the simpelest tasks a operating system is designed to perform. It should do it well.

Now, you can say that NTFS is different and NTFS is awesome.. You can also say that The VCR is different and awesome, but that is still not an excuse to stick with that instead of upgrading to DVD when the technology is available. We were still using VCRs when NTFS came out now they have blu ray.

Comment by Adam N. Outler on June 19, 2010 at 11:36am: SSDs on the horizon does not replace the 5 year life expectancy of currently produced platter disks.

Comment by Mohamed Elsherif on June 19, 2010 at 11:28am: first. It is not a crappy file system, as long as you can't make a valid comparison between the two file systems for example Ext & NTFS, because simple Windows doesn't run on Ext, so you can't really prove either Ext is better or vise versa.

Comment by Tyler Brown on June 19, 2010 at 10:23am: SSDs won't be really all that popular for at least another couple years.
Not to mention, theres the issue of the Read/write lmit on the Cellso f data on Flash memory. If you're using Windows and happen to not have too much RAM, but you do have an SSD, although page file would seem to speed things up, it wouldn't take long for Page File to kill an SSD.

Not to mention, just because SSDs are going to become mainstream just in the horizon is NO excuse for Microsoft to still have a crappy file system.

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