The HPFS solves all of the historical problems of the FAT file system. It achieves excellent throughput even in extreme cases—many very small files or a few very large files—by means of advanced data structures and techniques such as intelligent caching, read-ahead, and write-behind. Disk space is used economically because it is managed on a sector basis. Existing application programs will need modification to take advantage of the HPFS's support for extended attributes and long filenames, but these changes will not be difficult. All application programs will benefit from the HPFS's improved performance and decreased CPU use whether they are modified or not.

This article is based on a prerelease version of the HPFS that was still undergoing modification and tuning. Therefore, the final release of the HPFS may differ in some details from the description given here—Ed.