In computing, the NetWare File System (NWFS) was a file system based on a heavily optimized, journal-based FAT file system. It was used in the Novell NetWare network operating system. It was the only file system for all volumes in NetWare versions 2.x, 3.x and 4.x, and the default and only file system for the SYS: volume continuing through version 5.x. Novell developed two varieties of NWFS:
- 16-bit NWFS 286, used in NetWare 2.x
- 32-bit NWFS 386, used in NetWare 3.x through NetWare 6.x.
In NetWare 5 and above, Novell Storage Services (NSS, released in 1998), superseded the NWFS format.
The NWFS on-disk format was never publicly released by Novell, but it was released by former Novell engineers as an open source project on Windows, Linux, and DOS in 2000. The project contains a complete rewrite of the NetWare File System, publishes all of the file system internals, and is hosted on GitHub and GitLab.
The published specifications