NT File System (NTFS) is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft in the 1990s.
File Explorer, previously known as Windows Explorer, is a file manager application and default desktop environment that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface for accessing the file systems, as well as user interface elements such as the taskbar and desktop.
WinFS was the code name for a canceled data storage and management system project based on relational databases, developed by Microsoft and first demonstrated in 2003. It was intended as an advanced storage subsystem for the Microsoft Windows operating system, designed for persistence and management of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data.
Spotlight is a system-wide desktop search feature of Apple's macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS operating systems. Spotlight is a selection-based search system, which creates an index of all items and files on the system. It is designed to allow the user to quickly locate a wide variety of items on the computer, including documents, pictures, music, applications, and System Settings. In addition, specific words in documents and in web pages in a web browser's history or bookmarks can be searched. It also allows the user to narrow down searches with creation dates, modification dates, sizes, types and other attributes. Spotlight also offers quick access to definitions from the built-in New Oxford American Dictionary and to calculator functionality. There are also command-line tools to perform functions such as Spotlight searches.
Google Desktop was a computer program with desktop search capabilities, created by Google for Linux, Apple Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows systems. It allowed text searches of a user's email messages, computer files, music, photos, chats, web pages viewed, and the ability to display "Google Gadgets" on the user's desktop in a sidebar.
Desktop search tools search within a user's own computer files as opposed to searching the Internet. These tools are designed to find information on the user's PC, including web browser history, e-mail archives, text documents, sound files, images, and video. A variety of desktop search programs are now available; see this list for examples. Most desktop search programs are standalone applications. Desktop search products are software alternatives to the search software included in the operating system, helping users sift through desktop files, emails, attachments, and more.
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of notable file managers.
In computing, a file shortcut is a handle in a user interface that allows the user to find a file or resource located in a different directory or folder from the place where the shortcut is located. Similarly, an Internet shortcut allows the user to open a page, file or resource located at a remote Internet location or Web site.
In computing, a virtual folder generally denotes an organizing principle for files that is not dependent on location in a hierarchical directory tree. Instead, it consists of software that coalesces results from a data store, which may be a database or a custom index, and presents them visually in the format in which folder views are presented. A virtual folder can be thought of as a view that lists all files tagged with a certain tag, and thus a simulation of a folder whose dynamic contents can be assembled on the fly, when requested. It is related in concept to several other topics in computer science, with names including saved search, saved query, and filtering.
As the next version of Windows NT after Windows 2000, as well as the successor to Windows Me, Windows XP introduced many new features but it also removed some others.
Compared with previous versions of Microsoft Windows, features new to Windows Vista are numerous, covering most aspects of the operating system, including additional management features, new aspects of security and safety, new I/O technologies, new networking features, and new technical features. Windows Vista also removed some others.
Windows Live Mesh is a discontinued free-to-use Internet-based file synchronization application by Microsoft designed to allow files and folders between two or more computers to be in sync with each other on Windows and Mac OS X computers or the Web via SkyDrive. Windows Live Mesh also enabled remote desktop access via the Internet.
NTFS links are the abstraction used in the NTFS file system—the default file system for all Microsoft Windows versions belonging to the Windows NT family—to associate pathnames and certain kinds of metadata, with entries in the NTFS Master File Table (MFT). NTFS broadly adopts a pattern akin to typical Unix file systems in the way it stores and references file data and metadata; the most significant difference is that in NTFS, the MFT "takes the place of" inodes, fulfilling most of the functions which inodes fulfill in a typical Unix filesystem.
Windows Home Server is a home server operating system from Microsoft. It was announced on 7 January 2007 at the Consumer Electronics Show by Bill Gates, released to manufacturing on 16 July 2007 and officially released on 4 November 2007.
In computing, the trash, also known by other names such as dustbin, wastebasket, and others, is a graphical user interface desktop metaphor for temporary storage for files set aside by the user for deletion, but not yet permanently erased. The concept and name is part of Mac operating systems, a similar implementation is called the Recycle Bin in Microsoft Windows, and other operating systems use other names.
Microsoft OneDrive is a file-hosting service operated by Microsoft. First released in August 2007, it allows registered users to store, share and sync their files. OneDrive also works as the storage backend of the web version of Microsoft 365 / Office. OneDrive offers 5 GB of storage space free of charge, with 100 GB, 1 TB, and 6 TB storage options available either separately or with Microsoft 365 subscriptions.
Windows Search is a content index and desktop search platform by Microsoft introduced in Windows Vista as a replacement for the previous Indexing Service of Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003, designed to facilitate local and remote queries for files and non-file items in the Windows Shell and in compatible applications. It was developed after the postponement of WinFS and introduced to Windows several benefits of that platform.
UpdateStar is a freeware software application providing update information for approximately 1.3 million software programs. Implementing a social computing aspect, the update database is maintained by the users. UpdateStar uses advertising to refinance the free service and shares ad revenue 50/50 with the software authors via their Share program.
Windows Server 2012, codenamed "Windows Server 8", is the ninth version of the Windows Server operating system by Microsoft, as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It is the server version of Windows based on Windows 8 and succeeds Windows Server 2008 R2, which is derived from the Windows 7 codebase, released nearly three years earlier. Two pre-release versions, a developer preview and a beta version, were released during development. The software was officially launched on September 4, 2012, which was the month before the release of Windows 8. It was succeeded by Windows Server 2012 R2 in 2013. Mainstream support for Windows Server 2012 ended on October 9, 2018, and extended support ended on October 10, 2023. Windows Server 2012 is eligible for the paid Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, which offers continued security updates until October 13, 2026.
