Identify Common File Systems

Files are organized on a disk by a file system, which acts like a library's card catalog. This article identifies and explains common file systems like FAT32 (for USB drives), NTFS (for Windows), and Ext4 (for Linux). You'll learn about the different structures and metadata each system uses. For a forensic investigator, understanding the file system is the first step to knowing how to find, interpret, and recover data from a device.