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About File Management

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The following topics contain more information about file management.

In this section

Topic Description
File System Functionality Comparison
 Tables that list functionality and feature support comparisons for the four main Windows file systems, NTFS, exFAT, UDF, and FAT32.
Files and Clusters
 A file is a unit of data in the file system that a user can access and manage.
Creating, Deleting, and Maintaining Files
 Functions to use to create, delete, and maintain files.
Obtaining and Setting File Information
 Functions to use to get and set file information.
Reading From and Writing to Files
 An application reads from and writes to a file by using the ReadFile, ReadFileEx, WriteFile, and WriteFileEx functions.
File and Directory Linking
 There are two types of links supported in the NTFS file system: hard links and junctions.
Block Cloning
 A block clone operation instructs the file system to copy a range of file bytes on behalf of an application.
File Compression and Decompression
 The NTFS file system uses Lempel-Ziv compression, which is a lossless compression algorithm.
File Encryption
 The Encrypted File System (EFS) provides cryptographic protection of individual files on NTFS file system volumes by using a public-key system.
File Security and Access Rights
 Because files are securable objects, access to them is regulated by the access-control model that governs access to all other securable objects in Windows.
Input and Output (I/O)
 Windows provides the ability to perform input and output (I/O) operations on storage components located on local and remote computers.
Sparse Files
 File compression of files that contain mostly zeros makes efficient use of disk space.
Symbolic Links
 A symbolic link is a file-system object that points to another file system object. The object being pointed to is called the target.