Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc. 47 Chapter 2 Operating Systems C:\Windows. In reality, this folder can be located on any partition. In Microsoft technical literature, the exact location of the Windows folder is indicated as %systemroot% rather than C:\Windows. Th e %systemroot% variable is used in the path to represent the location of the Windows folder. File Systems No introduction to operating systems would be complete without mentioning fi le systems. A fi le system refers to the method of organizing fi les on a storage device. It is an indexing system used by the operating system to keep track of all fi les on the disk. Th e fi le system maintains a fi le table of all areas on the disk, and it tracks which areas are being used for data and which are free and available at any given time. A fi le table is a component of a fi le system used to organize fi les on a storage device. File systems will be covered in greater depth in Chapter 10. Legacy fi le systems with which you should be familiar are FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32. Beginning with Windows NT, the default fi le system used by Windows oper- ating systems has been NTFS. Th e basic FAT and FAT16 are options for Windows 7 when formatting fl ash drives. In Windows 10, FAT and FAT16 are only supported for reading older devices. Under Windows 10, USB media can only be formatted as FAT32, exFAT, or NTFS. It is important to note that the FAT fi le system is no lon- ger supported for formatting or installing the OS on internal storage as of the latest Windows 10 release. As you study operating systems more in-depth, you will learn about other types of fi le systems, such as Apple File System (APFS). Th e Linux OS has support for many diff erent fi le system types including ext2, ext3, ext4, Btrfs, XFS, and JFS. Each type of fi le system has its own features and advantages, so it is important to understand these features in order to select the best choice for a given application. Th ere will be more about fi le systems in Chapter 10. Confi guration Files When a computer system is confi gured, the type of hardware and software the system has planned for use is recorded in a confi guration fi le. Confi guration fi les contain information such as the amount of memory and the type of video adapter present in 1002: 2.6 1002: 1.5, 2.6 Goodheart-Willcox Publisher Figure 2-8 Pathnames indicate locations for fi les on a specifi c computer or even across a network system.