What is NTFS/NTFS5?

NTFS is short for New Technology File System. It is a file system that was originally designed for Windows NT and today is supported its later versions, including Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

NTFS supersedes the FAT file system as the preferred file system for Microsoft's Windows operating systems. It offers a number of improvements over FAT in terms of performance, extendibility, and security, such as improved support for metadata and the use of advanced data structures to improve performance, reliability, and disk space utilization, plus additional extensions such as security access control lists (ACL) and file system journaling.

There are several versions of NTFS: v1.0 released mid-1993, v1.1 released fall 1994, v1.2 (occasionally referred to as NTFS 4.0, because OS version is 4.0), v3.0 from Windows 2000 (NTFS V5.0), v3.1 from Windows XP (NTFS V5.1), Windows Server 2003 (occasionally NTFS V5.2), Windows Vista (occasionally NTFS V6.0), Windows Server 2008, Windows 7.

See: FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, VFAT