Operation Manual

Hard Disk And Operating System

110

After formatting, logical disks are organized as follows:

• Logical disks start with the boot sector

• One or several copies of the file allocation table (FAT) are placed after the

boot sector

• A root folder is created

• The data area is created

Each logical disk has to be formatted with the FORMAT command separately.

A.8 File Systems

The logical structure that has been created on the hard disk is supported by

means of the operating system. The file system itself presents the information on

the disk as an ensemble of files and folders.

For the user, a file is a unit of storage of logically connected information,

including texts, graphics, and sound. For data storage organization, a file is a

chain of connected sectors or clusters. A cluster is a unit of several sectors.

(Sectors are characteristic for file systems supported by various versions of

Windows.)

Operating systems support file systems on hard disks (or disk partitions) by

allowing you to create, copy and delete files and folders.

At present, the most widely used file systems for PCs are the following two:

• FAT16/FAT32 (file allocation table) for DOS, OS/2 and

Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP;

• NTFS (Windows NT file system) for Windows NT/2000/XP.

However, there are many other file systems. Linux operating system, which is

now gaining popularity, widely uses three file systems:

• Ext2 is a file system for end-users’ PCs

• Ext3 is the default file system used by Red Hat Linux

• ReiserFS is a more secure (with respect to data integrity) file system that is

used on data servers