Several on-disk and in-memory structures are used to implement a file system. These structures vary depending on the operating system and the file system, but some general principles apply
On disk, the file system may contain information about how to boot an operating system stored there, the total number of blocks, the number and location of free blocks, the directory structure, and individual files
- A boot control block (per volume) can contain information needed by the system to boot an operating system from that volume. If the disk does not contain an operating system, this block can be empty. It is typically the first block of a volume. In UFS, it is called the boot block. In NTFS, it is the partition boot sector
- A volume control block (per volume) contains volume (or partition) details, such as the number of blocks in the partition, the size of the blocks, a free-block count and free-block pointers, and a free-FCB count and FCB pointers. In UFS, this is called a superblock. In NTFS, it is stored in the master file table
- A directory structure (per file system) is used to organize the files. In UFS, this includes file names and associated inode numbers. In NTFS, it is stored in the master file table
- A per-file FCB contains many details about the file. It has a unique identifier number to allow association with a directory entry. In NTFS, this information is actually stored within the master file table, which uses a relational database structure, with a row per file