Role of the FileSystem

[Derek Jean-Baptiste]

Hello and please pardon me if this is already in an FAQ somewhere (I 
have looked but did not find anything that really answers this).

What is the role of the FileSystem in the Repository, Version and 
Workspace? 

Is any information permanently stored there?
If you use SimpleDBPersistenceManager and a LocalFileSystem and lose the 
LocalFileSystem, can you recover from that loss?

Thanks
Derek