<P> The FAT12 and FAT16 file systems had a limit on the number of entries in the root directory of the file system and had restrictions on the maximum size of FAT - formatted disks or partitions . </P> <P> FAT32 addresses the limitations in FAT12 and FAT16, except for the file size limit of close to 4 GB, but it remains limited compared to NTFS . </P> <P> FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 also have a limit of eight characters for the file name, and three characters for the extension (such as . exe). This is commonly referred to as the 8.3 filename limit . VFAT, an optional extension to FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32, introduced in Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.5, allowed long file names (LFN) to be stored in the FAT file system in a backwards compatible fashion . </P> <P> NTFS, introduced with the Windows NT operating system in 1993, allowed ACL - based permission control . Other features also supported by NTFS include hard links, multiple file streams, attribute indexing, quota tracking, sparse files, encryption, compression, and reparse points (directories working as mount - points for other file systems, symlinks, junctions, remote storage links). </P>

In a computer file systems which among the following is top or first in hierarchy