2 Abstract
This essay will discuss the key concepts within modern file systems, ranging from simply defining what a filesystem is, to detailing what exactly a file consists of. Historical developments within file systems and storage technologies will be outlined, and state-of-the-art file system features will be described.
3 Introduction
Procrustes was an ancient Attican malefactor who forced wayfarers to lie on an iron bed and either stretched or cut short each person’s legs to fit the bed’s length. Finally Procrustes was forced onto his own bed by Thesius.
A similar Procrustean technique was applied to filesystems and data storage for many years. System architecture, data record / file formats and structures being twisted to fit many
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By separating the data into identifiable blocks, the information can be easily located. (1) Each grouping of data, which takes its name from the method of organising paper-based information, is referred to as a “file”. The file system is comprised of two specific parts: a collection of files and a directory structure, which provides data about and organises all of the files in the file system. (3) Some filesystems will be used on local data storage devices, whereas others provide access over a network, through a network protocol such as NFS. (2)
A filesystem can refer to an entire storage system or part of an isolated segment of storage, i.e. a disk partition. The word ‘filesystem’ can be used to refer to a partition or disk that is used to store files or as part of the description of the type of filesystem in use. For example, one could say “this is an ‘extended filesystem’” in reference to the type of filesystem in use, or “I have three filesystems” meaning that one has three partitions on which one can store files. (4) There is an incredibly important difference between a disk or partition and the filesystem that it contains. Some programs will operate directly on sectors of a disk or partition, so they could desolate or seriously corrupt any current filesystem. However, most programs operate at the filesystem level, and subsequently will not operate correctly on a disk or partition that either does not contain a
The first medium I want to cover is a hard-drive that is used inside computers and servers. A hard-drive can be broken up into different partitions, which sets up a volume with a single file system and a unique drive letter. These partitions of the hard-drive are kept track in a table called a partitions table. A hard-drive uses NTFS which breaks the drive into sectors of 512 bytes. These different sectors are stored
List and describe at least three types of storage that is typically included in all computer systems.
12. Which of the following answers are true about an internal hard disk drive (HDD) as it is
Partitioning strategy: The hierarchical partitioning of data into a set of directories – The placement and replication properties of directories is
A - File Management is where the user is able to not only create files but they can do the following – delete files, copy and paste files, cut, move files, rename files and form folders to store these files. By doing this it means it’s significantly quicker to find previously stored files, and being able to create separate folders and manage those means that all your data can be more organised, whereas if you don’t name files/organise them, you’re at risk of losing files and wasting time trying to find them. File management is an extremely important feature because allowing you to rename your files means that you know exactly what that document is, and if the user were having to upload an assignment they would know exactly which to upload, and not only that but it means that if other people need access to specific files and they’re named correctly it means all they have to do is type in my computer the file name. Having the
Sequential file organizations access data sequentially from the beginning [1], i.e. to reach file 27, the 26 preceding files must be accessed first. They are much slower to access compared to random access [1]. Sequential files are stored on a sequential access device [2]. The records contained in sequential files are stored in a predetermined order [2], according to the value of a search key [1], and are stored one after the other [2] as they are inserted into the file. Records can only be accessed (read from and written to) sequentially (i.e. in the same order that they were entered) [3]. Sequential files are designed for efficient processing [1]). Records stored in sequential files cannot be deleted,
Chapter 7 discusses compression algorithms. Compressions are used often and sometimes we may not even be aware of it. The items we download or upload may be compressed in order to save bandwidth. Chapter 8 discusses the fundamental algorithms underlying databases (MacCormick, 7). This chapter emphasizes the techniques used to achieve consistency and to ensure that databases never contradict each other. Chapter 9 discusses the ability to ‘sign’ an electronic document digitally (MacCormick, 7). Chapter 10 discusses algorithms that would be considered great if it existed.
Blocks are the logical records which breaks the area used by a partition; clusters are physical bodies of a hard disk. Hard disk is usually broken in to cylinders and cylinders are broken down in to clusters. Most HDD arrive from the factory with a low level pattern where, block size = 512 bytes. The NTFS file system can produce cluster sizes of a multiple of 512 having a default of 8 blocks for every cluster. Size of a block is multiple of size of cluster, such that a logical block will fit a definite number of physical clusters “one file one cluster”. That is, in every cluster will be installed information belonging at most to a single file. As an aftermath, when scripting a file in a hard disk, some cluster remains incompletely filled or fully unused. As the operating system can only write an entire block, it pursues that the idle space should be fit with some strings of bytes that can be used by others. It should be remembered that these data are saved in a disk because of the operating system curbs to write only on an entire block, they could be detected by locating
Ext3fs or third extended file system is a journaled file system that is commonly used by the Linux Kernel. It is the default file system for many Linux distributions.
File- A collection of bytes, assigned a name for easy reference by the file system ad grouped together for storage on a
The virtual file system states all the possible operations that can be performed on a file system.
9. What is the fstab file used for and what fields make up its content? Explain
Databases allow us to easily store and retrieve data in a purely digital format. The strength of this is that large amounts of data can be stored and retrieved with minimal effort on the part of the user. Opposed to manually flipping through files, one can quickly pull up the requested data through a computer program. Many systems that were conventionally paper and file based have been converted to a digital format which are now stored in one or more databases.
Host-side storage software. Much work has been done on analyzing the reliability of general storage software [22, 28–32]. For example, our previous framework [31] simulates failures at the driver layer and analyzes the recovery capability of databases.
The experiments show that this technique can significantly reduce the transmission time of image files that have already existed in storage. Also the deletion rate for image groups which have the same version of operating systems but different versions of software applications is up about 58%.