FILE SYSTEM

The file system in Mac OS X has at its core a set

of directories inherited from the Berkeley
Software Distribution (BSD) operating system
The Mac OS X file system was designed to
provide power and flexibility while maintaining
the traditional ease-of-use users expect
the file system provides users with a consistent
structure that makes it clear where resources
are located
FILE SYSTEM
 File System Domains
 User - The user domain contains resources specific to the user who is logged in
to the system
- The user has complete control of what goes into this domain
 Local - The local domain contains resources such as applications and documents
that are shared among all users of a particular system but are not needed for the
system to run
- Users with system administrator privileges can add, remove, and modify
items in this domain
 Network - The network domain contains resources such as applications and
documents that are shared among all users of a local area network
- Items in this domain are typically located on network file servers and are under
the control of a network administrator
 System - The system domain contains the system software installed by Apple
- The resources in the system domain are required by the system to run
- Users cannot add, remove, or alter items in this domain
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 Supported File Systems
File System Description

HFS Mac OS Standard file system. Standard Macintosh file

system for older versions of Mac OS.
HFS Plus Mac OS Extended file system. Standard Macintosh file
system for Mac OS X.
UFS Unix File System. A variant of the BSD “Fast File
System.”
WebDAV Used for directly accessing files on the web. For
example, iDisk uses WebDAV for accessing files.
UDF Universal Disk Format. The standard file system for all
forms of DVD media (video, ROM, RAM and RW) and
some writable CD formats.
FAT The MS-DOS file system, with 16- and 32-bit variants.

SMB/CIFS Used for sharing files with Microsoft Windows SMB file
servers.
AFP AppleTalk Filing Protocol. The primary network file
system for all versions of Mac OS.
NFS Network File System. A commonly-used BSD file
sharing standard. Mac OS X supports NFSv2 and
NFSv3 over TCP and UDP.
FTP A file system wrapper for the standard Internet File
Transfer Protocol.
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 HFS+(Hierarchical File System Plus)
 the preferred file system on Mac OS X
 architecturally similar to HFS, with several important improvements such as:
 32 bits used for allocation blocks (instead of 16). HFS divides the disk space on a partition into
equal-sized allocation-blocks. Since 16 bits are used to refer to an allocation-block, there can be
at most 216 allocation blocks on an HFS filesystem. Thus, using 32 bits for identifying allocation
blocks results in much less wasted space (and more files).
 Long file names up to 255 characters
 Unicode based file name encoding
 File/Directory attributes can be extended in future (as opposed to being fixed size)
 In addition to a System Folder ID (for starting Apple operating systems), a dedicated startup file
that can easily be found (its location and size are stored in the volume header in a fixed location)
during startup, is also supported so that non-Apple systems can boot from a HFS+ file system
 Largest file size is 263 bytes
 HFS Plus uses B* tree to store most volume metada
FILE SYSTEM
 UFS (Unix File System)
 a file system used by many Unix and Unix-like operating systems
architecturally similar to HFS, with several important improvements such as:

 a few blocks at the beginning of the partition reserved for boot blocks (which must be
initialized separately from the file system)
 a superblock, containing a magic number identifying this as a UFS file system, and
some other vital numbers describing this file system's geometry and statistics and
behavioral tuning parameters
 a collection of cylinder groups
FILE SYSTEM
 File System Comparisons
Feature HFS+ UFS
Case sensitive No Yes
Supports multiple file forks Yes No
Path separator character “:” “/”

Supports modification dates Yes Yes

Supports creation dates Yes No
Supports sparse files No Yes
Supports zero-filling of files Yes No
Supports aliases Yes No
Supports symbolic links Yes Yes
Supports ACLs Yes No
Supports creation dates Yes No