# NetWare File System > Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/NetWare_File_System > Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/NetWare_File_System.md > Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetWare_File_System > Source revision: 1330622448 > License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) File system based on FAT NWFS Developer(s) Novell Full name NetWare File System Partition IDs 0x64 (NWFS 286), 0x65 (NWFS 386), 0x66 (NWFS 386) Limits Max volume size 1 TB Max file size 4 GB Features Transparent compression Yes Other Supported operating systems Novell NetWare, MSDOS, Microsoft Windows, and Linux In [computing](/source/Computing), the **NetWare File System** (**NWFS**) was a [file system](/source/File_system) based on a heavily optimized, journal-based [FAT](/source/File_Allocation_Table) file system. It was used in the [Novell NetWare](/source/Novell_NetWare) [network operating system](/source/Network_operating_system). It was the only file system for all volumes in NetWare versions 2.x, 3.x and 4.x, and the default and only file system for the SYS: volume continuing through version 5.x. Novell developed two varieties of NWFS: 1. 16-bit NWFS 286, used in NetWare 2.x 1. 32-bit NWFS 386, used in NetWare 3.x through NetWare 6.x. In NetWare 5 and above, [Novell Storage Services](/source/Novell_Storage_Services) (NSS, released in 1998), superseded the NWFS format. The NWFS on-disk format was never publicly released by Novell, but it was released by former Novell engineers as an open source project on Windows, Linux, and DOS in 2000. The project contains a complete rewrite of the NetWare File System, publishes all of the file system internals, and is hosted on [GitHub](/source/GitHub) and [GitLab](/source/GitLab).[1][2] The published specifications[1][*[failed verification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability)*] for 32-bit NWFS are: - Maximum file size: 4 [GB](/source/Gigabyte) - Maximum volume size: 1 [TB](/source/Terabyte) - Maximum files per volume: 2 million when using a single name space. - Maximum files per server: 16 million - Maximum directory entries: 16 million - Maximum volumes per server: 64 - Maximum volumes per partition: 8 - Maximum open files per server: 100,000 - Maximum directory tree depth: 100 levels - Characters used: ASCII double-byte - Maximum [extended attributes](/source/Metadata_(computing)): 512 - Maximum [data streams](/source/Fork_(filesystem)): 10 - Support for different name spaces: [Microsoft Windows](/source/Microsoft_Windows) [Long names](/source/Long_filename) (a.k.a. [OS/2](/source/OS%2F2) namespace), [Unix](/source/Unix), [Apple Macintosh](/source/Apple_Macintosh) - Support for restoring deleted files (salvage) - Support for journaling (Novell *Transaction Tracking System* a.k.a. *TTS*) - Support for block suballocation, starting in NetWare 4.x For larger files, the file system utilized a performance feature named *Turbo FAT*.[*[citation needed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)*] Transparent file compression was also supported, although this had a significant impact on the performance of file serving. Every name space requires its own separate directory entry for each file. While the maximum number of directory entries is 16,000,000, two resident name spaces would reduce the usable maximum number of directory entries to 8,000,000, and three to 5,333,333. 16-bit NWFS could handle volumes of up to 256 [MB](/source/Megabyte). However, its only name-space support was a dedicated [API](/source/Application_programming_interface) to handle Macintosh clients. The Netware File System supported native [RAID 0](/source/Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_0) and [RAID 1](/source/Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_1) capabilities long before RAID systems came into use on personal computers. Disk mirroring and duplexing were basic features of the file system, and NWFS also supported multi-segmented volumes, and round-robin reads, much like RAID 0 and RAID 1 does today. ## See also - [List of file systems](/source/List_of_file_systems) - [Comparison of file systems](/source/Comparison_of_file_systems) - [Transaction-Safe FAT File System](/source/Transaction-Safe_FAT_File_System) ## References 1. ^ [***a***](#cite_ref-GitLab_2024_u925_1-0) [***b***](#cite_ref-GitLab_2024_u925_1-1) ["netware-file-system ยท GitLab"](https://gitlab.com/jeffmerkey/netware-file-system). *GitLab*. 2024-04-03. Retrieved 2024-04-03. 1. **[^](#cite_ref-GitHub_2019_m762_2-0)** ["netware-file-system: Open Source NetWare SMP File System for Linux, Windows, and DOS"](https://github.com/jeffmerkey/netware-file-system). *GitHub*. 2019-05-30. Retrieved 2024-04-03. ## External links - [Using the Transaction Tracking System](http://www.novell.com/de-de/documentation/nw6p/?sos__enu/data/h0wbzsqh.html) v t e File systems Comparison of file systems distributed Unix filesystem Disk and non-rotating ADFS AdvFS Amiga FFS Amiga OFS APFS AthFS bcachefs BFS Be File System Boot File System Byte File System (z/VM) Btrfs CVFS CXFS DFS EFS Encrypting File System Extent File System Episode ext ext2 ext3 ext4 FAT exFAT Files-11 Fossil GPFS HAMMER HAMMER2 HFS (Classic Mac OS) HFS (MVS) HFS+ HPFS HTFS JFS LFS MFS Macintosh File System TiVo Media File System MINIX NetWare File System Next3 NILFS NILFS2 NSS NTFS OneFS OpenZFS PFS QFS QNX4FS ReFS ReiserFS Reiser4 Reliance Reliance Nitro RFS SFS Shared File System (VM) Smart File System SNFS Soup (Apple) Tux3 UBIFS UFS/UFS2 soft updates WAPBL VxFS WAFL Xiafs XFS Xsan zFS (z/OS) ZFS (Sun) Optical disc HSF ISO 9660 ISO 13490 UDF Flash memory and SSD APFS FAT exFAT TFAT EROFS F2FS JFS NVFS host-side wear leveling CHFS JFFS JFFS2 LogFS NILFS NILFS2 YAFFS UBIFS Distributed parallel BeeGFS Ceph CXFS GFS2 Google File System OCFS2 OrangeFS PVFS QFS Xsan more... NAS 9P AFS (OpenAFS) AFP Coda DFS Google File System GPFS Lustre NCP NFS POHMELFS Hadoop SMB (CIFS) SSHFS more... Specialized Aufs AXFS Boot File System Compact Disc File System cramfs Davfs2 EROFS FTPFS FUSE Lnfs LTFS NOVA MVFS SquashFS UMSDOS OverlayFS UnionFS Pseudo configfs devfs debugfs kernfs procfs specfs sysfs tmpfs WinFS Encrypted eCryptfs EncFS EFS Rubberhose SSHFS ZFS Types Clustered Global Grid Self-certifying Flash Journaling Log-structured Object Record-oriented Semantic Steganographic Synthetic Versioning Features Case preservation Copy-on-write Data deduplication Data scrubbing Execute in place Extent File attribute Extended file attributes File change log Fork Inode Links Hard Symbolic Access control Access-control list Filesystem-level encryption Permissions Modes Sticky bit Interfaces File manager File system API Installable File System Virtual file system Lists Cryptographic Default Log-structured Layouts Master Boot Record GUID Partition Table Apple Partition Map --- Adapted from the Wikipedia article [NetWare File System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetWare_File_System) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetWare_File_System?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.