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What are the root directories?

  • Article

Azure Databricks historically used directories in the workspace root directory for common storage locations. Most of these locations are deprecated.

/Volumes provides an alias for path-based access to data in Unity Catalog volumes. See What are Unity Catalog volumes?.

  • /databricks-datasets
  • /user/hive/warehouse
  • /FileStore
  • /databricks-results
  • /databricks/init

What is stored in the /databricks-datasets directory?

The /databricks-datasets directory is available on all access mode configurations unless custom workspace permissions set by workspace administrators prevent access.

Databricks provides a number of open source datasets in this directory. Many of the tutorials and demos provided by Databricks reference these datasets, but you can also use them to indepedently explore the functionality of Azure Databricks.

What is stored in the /user/hive/warehouse directory?

This is the default location for data for managed tables registered to the hive_metastore.

What is stored in the /Filestore directory?

The /Filestore directory might contain data and libraries uploaded through the Azure Databricks UI or image files for generated plots.

This is primarily legacy behavior, and most UI options now upload files using either workspace files or volumes.

What is stored in the /databricks-results directory?

/databricks-results stores files generated by downloading the full results of a query.

What is stored in the /databricks/init directory?

Some workspaces might contain this directory, which was used to hold legacy global init scripts, which should not be used. See Global init scripts (legacy).