The earliest flash file system, managing an array of flash as a freely writable disk, was TrueFFS by M-Systems of Israel, presented as a software product in PC-Card Expo at Santa Clara, California, in July 1992 and patented in 1993.
[5] FFS2 was preceded by an earlier product, called "FFS", which however fell short of being a flash file system, managing a flash array as write once read many (WORM) space rather than as a freely writable disk.
Around 1994, the PCMCIA, an industry group, approved the Flash Translation Layer (FTL) specification, based on the design of M-Systems' TrueFFS.
The specification was authored and jointly proposed by M-Systems and SCM Microsystems, who also provided the first working implementations of FTL.
Endorsed by Intel,[6] FTL became a popular flash file system design in non-PCMCIA media as well.