I'm doing a paper on NTFS vs FAT32 and showing a comparison between both file systems. As far as my knowledge goes, I know that NTFS uses the MFT for holding all the files and directories whereas FAT32 only knows the following cluster for a specific file or directory. This means that FAT32 doesn't know a-priori the first block of a file if not found first by looking up in a specific directory.
My question is the following, if NTFS holds all information regarding the file system in a file does it mean it's going to be faster when doing a raw search for a filename "test.txt" within the system? From what I know, FAT will have to scan every directory in the hard drive and in each directory look if the filename exists whereas in NTFS, it only needs to scan the MFT file which is contiguous for a record that has name : "text.txt". Am I right or I'm missing something?
I don't know, probably yes(40% bet), but to turn your problem into Stack Overflow coding on-topic here are some resources where you can find your answer and give us your self-answer:
probably, by reading "text":
for sure, by reading "code":
C source code of the NTFS file system driver used by Linux - "Linux is a clone of the operating system Unix, written from scratch by Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across the Net. It aims towards POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliance"C source code of the NTFS file system driver used by ReactOS - "free open source operating system based on the best design principles found in the Windows NT® architecture (Windows versions such as Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows Server 2012 are built on Windows NT architecture). Written completely from scratch, ReactOS is not a Linux based system, and shares none of the UNIX architecture"All of the above resources should agree on the concept and the two last resources show how the machines really treat the problem without some marketing talk (machines don't understand marketing and advertising very well)