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What is Android's file system? [closed]

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What is Android's file system?

In many ways, Android's filesystem resembles that of a desktop operating system like Windows and macOS. This is not too surprising — Android is based on a modified version of the Linux kernel. Like most desktop operating systems, Android also bundles a native file manager application.

What file system does Android 9 use?

Android has always supported the FAT32, Ext3, and Ext4 file system formats, but external drives are often formatted in exFAT or NTFS if they're over 4GB in size or use files that are over 4GB in size.

How do I know what filesystem is on my Android?

If you want to see your phone's full file system, though, you'll still have to go through Settings > Storage > Other. It will open the Downloads app with a previously hidden view that lets you view every folder and file on yoru device.


It depends on what filesystem, for example /system and /data are yaffs2 while /sdcard is vfat. This is the output of mount:

rootfs / rootfs ro 0 0
tmpfs /dev tmpfs rw,mode=755 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,mode=600 0 0
proc /proc proc rw 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw 0 0
tmpfs /sqlite_stmt_journals tmpfs rw,size=4096k 0 0
none /dev/cpuctl cgroup rw,cpu 0 0
/dev/block/mtdblock0 /system yaffs2 ro 0 0
/dev/block/mtdblock1 /data yaffs2 rw,nosuid,nodev 0 0
/dev/block/mtdblock2 /cache yaffs2 rw,nosuid,nodev 0 0
/dev/block//vold/179:0 /sdcard vfat rw,dirsync,nosuid,nodev,noexec,uid=1000,gid=1015,fmask=0702,dmask=0702,allow_utime=0020,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro 0 0

and with respect to other filesystems supported, this is the list

nodev   sysfs
nodev   rootfs
nodev   bdev
nodev   proc
nodev   cgroup
nodev   binfmt_misc
nodev   sockfs
nodev   pipefs
nodev   anon_inodefs
nodev   tmpfs
nodev   inotifyfs
nodev   devpts
nodev   ramfs
         vfat
         msdos
nodev   nfsd
nodev   smbfs
         yaffs
         yaffs2
nodev   rpc_pipefs

By default, it uses YAFFS - Yet Another Flash File System.


Most answers here are pretty old.

In the past when un managed nand was the most popular storage technology, yaffs2 was the most common file system. This days there are few devices using un-managed nand, and those still in use are slowly migrating to ubifs.

Today most common storage is emmc (managed nand), for such devices ext4 is far more popular, but, this file system is slowly clears its way for f2fs (flash friendly fs).

Edit: f2fs will probably won't make it as the common fs for flash devices (including android)


Johan is close - it depends on the hardware manufacturer. For example, Samsung Galaxy S phones uses Samsung RFS (proprietary). However, the Nexus S (also made by Samsung) with Android 2.3 uses Ext4 (presumably because Google told them to - the Nexus S is the current Google experience phone). Many community developers have also started moving to Ext4 because of this shift.