A Metric for Evaluating the Usability of File Systems

Since the amount of files stored in a personal computer is continuously growing, there is a need to efficiently organize them. This paper proposes a metric that evaluates the ability of a file system to assist the user in organizing his files. This metric does not apply to specific file systems, but rather to file system paradigms. A relational file system (RFS) is also proposed, as an alternative to the classical, hierarchical one (HFS). By allowing the user to associate property-value pairs with the files, and to classify according to those pairs, RFS brings more flexibility and efficiency in the organization. RFS also supports advanced queries for grouping the files, and can be semantically enhanced, with ontologies. This relational file system proved to be more efficient for organizing files, according to the proposed metric, and in some real-life simulations.