For understanding and evaluating file systems and their dynamics, it is important to know what kind of data is stored in the file systems, and how these data change. However, little is known about the amount and kind of data stored, or about their dynamics and organization. The development of advanced storage and organization tools, as well as many related research and development activities, would benefit from more data and knowledge regarding the evaluation of file systems. This thesis aims

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... describe methodologies used for monitoring file systems. Two techniques for retrieving file system information and for detecting changes in the file system shall be introduced. Both techniques allow for gathering data about file systems, which can be used to study file system statistics. The study at hand focuses on what fractions of files in a file system are multimedia files and how these multimedia files as well as other files and directories are distributed in the file system. Furthermore, investigations about how file systems and the data stored in them changes over time and if there are file types or regions in the file system that are potentially more dynamic than others are performed. The first technique for retrieving file system information performs real-time logging of file system changes and the second creates file system snapshots of the whole file system. On the one hand, real-time logging of the file system delivers very accurate data about the file system and its dynamics. On the other hand this technique can be used for observing small file system regions only as the technique needs a lot of system resources and gets inefficient when too many objects must be observed. When creating file system snapshots information about each file and directory found in the file system is stored. The file system snapshots are created at a certain point in time (once, daily, weekly, yearly, etc.) and by comparing consecutive file system snapshots, changes of file system related meta data can be observed. One drawback of th [...]