Windows 10 supports multiple file systems out of the box. Some are legacy and exist primarily for backwards compatibility, others are modern and have wide application. This article describes various ways, which you can use to see what file system your drives are formatted with.
File system is a special way of storing and organizing your information on different media, including hard disks, solid state drives, USB drives and other devices. It allows you to store, modify, read files and folders for applications and the operating system installed on your computer.
When you format an internal drive or flash drive, you are preparing it for use as storage media for your operating system. During this process, a file system is created. During formatting, all information stored on the disk or partition will be deleted.
Windows 10 supports file systems FAT, FAT32, exFAT, NTFS And ReFS without using additional software.
They have different functions and properties. For example, FAT and FAT32 are legacy file systems. FAT supports a maximum capacity of 4GB, FAT32 supports 32GB. File FAT systems also have restrictions on the maximum file size. NTFS is the only file system that supports file compression and encryption and has advanced features.
There are several methods you can use to find the file system used on your drives.
This method is the simplest and fastest.
Alternatively, you can use the Diskpart tool, Disk Management, or PowerShell.
After running the command, you will see the file system for each drive connected to your computer.
Finally, there is another way to determine the file system for each drive connected to your computer using the PowerShell scripting language.
Now you know that it is very easy to determine the file system for your disks. You can use any method you like best.
On a PC with a decent amount of experience, you should check the file system monthly. IN Windows Explorer 7 Right-click on the disk icon and select “Properties | Service" and in the "Check disk for errors" section, click "Run check".
For Windows 8, the scan disk dialog has been trimmed down. To run the scan, open a command prompt window as an administrator. Type "chkdsk c: /f /r" (without quotes) with the corresponding volume letters.
The /f option corrects errors, /r starts file recovery on damaged sectors.
Open Explorer, select drive C in the left device tree, right-click on it and click Properties. In the window that opens, go to the Service tab. Now all that remains is to click on the Check button.
If the system has already scanned this disk, it will offer to run the scan again.
Photo: manufacturing company
In the event of an emergency power outage, the switched on Personal Computer crashes. If you're lucky, after power is restored, the computer can be turned on again and it will continue to work properly. But in 5 percent of cases there is a problem. This is due to errors occurring in the file system. hard drive. Such errors lead to the fact that the download fails to read the necessary files. And, of course, the computer does not turn on. To eliminate errors in the file system, you need to check its error checking. And this is where the problem arises. After all, checking the file system for errors requires a working computer. And as a result of that very error, this is precisely not the case.
Therefore, to perform the check you can use boot disk or bootable flash drive. Those. it will be a Live CD or similar to Live Flash. But in the case when you have another computer at hand, you can do it easier. The last time I used the “do it easier” method. 1. removed HDD on which an error occurred in the file system 2. connected to a working computer as a second drive 3. built-in using Windows performed a hard drive check 4. removed the hard drive after checking 5. and returned it to the target computer. The launch showed that the system's functionality has been restored. Here is a not very complicated way to check and restore the file system after errors appear in it.
To perform a FS check, perform the following operations: - go to “Computer” or “My Computer” - depending on which version of the Windows operating system you have - opens the context menu of the disk that you intend to check - select the “PROPERTS” item in the context menu - in the dialog that opens window, go to the “SERVICE” tab - on the tab that opens we see the “Check for errors” item and the “CHECK” button - on the detected button and click. - a dialog box appears, specifying consent to perform a disk scan - we answer in the affirmative. (It is important to note that the option “Scan and repair bad sectors” is marked in the image). If this option is selected, the check will consist of 5 stages, not three. The check will take longer, but one of the elements of the check will be the search and repair of bad blocks on the hard drive.
In case you check system disk, from which it was launched Windows program error checker will report that the check is in this moment is impossible and requires a reboot to complete it. If you agree to the reboot, the check will be performed the next time you turn on the computer. In the same case, when we check the file system on a hard drive removed from a third-party inoperative computer and connect it to our own working one, checking the required logical drive for errors will occur immediately after its launch. No reboot needed. Beginners may have a question - “which logical drive of the target hard drive should be checked if there are several logical drives?” My answer is that you need to check the one on which the operating system is installed. Everything is logical here. If the OS does not start on the target computer, then we can assume that the FS is faulty. But the OS is located on a certain logical drive, which means that problems with the FS are on it. It's chaotic, but that's how it is. After checking the FS for errors and eliminating them, there is a high chance that the computer will work normally again. If its performance has not been restored, then either errors in the FS of the disk are fatal and you will have to reinstall the OS, or the reason for the computer’s inoperability lies in something completely different, and not in the hard drive.
If you don’t want to run the disk scan using graphical OS tools, you can also run it using the command line. To do this, run - Start - Run - and in the command line window write the command “cmd” - run. If you have Windows 8.0 or Windows 8.1, then you will not find the “Run” window. And the command line window can be launched via hotkey combination - “Windows + R”.
To start the scan, the command was entered - CHKDSK D: /F /R 
As you can see from the command, disk “D” is set for testing. The following are the commands: /F- command to correct disk errors /R— a command to search for damaged sectors and restore surviving information. If you intend to study in more detail all the capabilities of the “CHKDSK” disk check command, then you can use the command Windows string display the parameters of this command - for this we use the command chkdsk /?
NTFS And FAT32 are not the only file systems that Windows 10 can see and read. It also supports legacy FAT, expanded exFAT, new ReFS, virtual CDFS, and also partially with those used in Linux EXT2 And EXT3. When working with disks, including removable ones, you may need to determine the current file system of the media or logical partition. You can do this in Windows 10 different ways.
Simplest- this is to open the disk properties and see what is specified in the parameter.
However, this method is only suitable for those drives that have a letter and explicitly "native" file system, if the media or partition is formatted in EXT3 or due to a failure it will be determined as RAW, it will not be available in Explorer. In this case, you should use a snap-in or console utility to determine the file system.
Press Win + X to open the Start button menu, launch the snap-in and look at the contents of the column.
The snap-in will display even those disks and partitions that do not have a letter. Another way to look FS carrier is to use the utility. Open command line and run these two commands in it:
list volume
The first command launches the utility, the second displays a list of all logical partitions. You will find the information you need in the column FS. Alternative - console. To find out the file system type for all disks, run it as an administrator and run the command get-volume. The searched values will be listed in the column FileSystemType.
Alas, all the methods described above have a common drawback, namely incorrect recognition Linux file systems CDFS And EXT2/3/4 .
So, in our example determined CDFS How Unknown and the Disk Management snap-in identified CDFS correct, but could not recognize EXT3, defining it as RAW, that is, like the absence of a file system. Standard tools began to show correct results only after installation - utilities and drivers to provide access to media EXT2/3/4 from under Windows.
And since we're talking about EXT2/3/4, at the same time it is also worth mentioning file systems HFS or HFS+, used in poppies. When connected to a Windows computer, they will also not be detected and in order to be able to work with them, you need to install a driver Paragon HFS+ or MacDrive.
How to determine the file system type?
Master's answer:
Typically, the user is well aware of the installed operating system on the computer and the file system used. But you may need to determine the file system type. It usually occurs when you sit down to work on someone else's computer.
A method of organizing and storing data on various storage media, including hard drives, determined by the file system. There are many different file systems. The most common file systems for operating systems Windows systems are: NTFS, FAT16, FAT32. For operating room Linux systems and for Unix - ext2 and ext3.
The file system type can be found in different ways. One of the ways (the simplest) is to open “My Computer”, select the disk that interests you, right-click on it and select “Properties” in the menu that opens. A window will open in which the type and file system of the disk will be written. For example, for operating systems Windows XP and Windows 7 will show the NTFS file system.
If in front of you there is a non-working computer that refuses to boot, then information about its disks can be viewed using Acronis programs Dick Director. It starts directly from the CD. To select boot from disk after start, press F12, a boot device selection window will open. There are computers on which the boot window is called up using other keys.
Now select boot from CD and press Enter. A menu will appear in which you need to select Acronis Dick Director. After loading, the program window will appear. In it you will see the computer disks indicating the file system types. Acronis Dick Director utility is very convenient program, which makes it possible to partition disks in the way you want and format them in the desired file system. Using the same program, you can, with a high degree of probability, recover disk partitions after they were accidentally lost. You can restore disks with all folders and files.
There is a version of the Acronis Dick Director utility that runs under Windows. Using it, you can also view information on file systems. But it is not recommended to carry out any operations on this version, since after rebooting the system there is a very high risk that the computer will not boot at all. If you need to split the disk, it is better to use the CD version, as it is very reliable.
