Usually, it operates in blocks, not sectors. This structure serves for the purposes of the whole storage and is also a part of an isolated storage segment – a disk partition. It is applied to the storage during the format operation. However, how do we know which sectors are occupied and which are free? Where are the size, position and name of the file stored? This is exactly what the file system is responsible for.Īs a whole, the file system (often abbreviated as FS) is a structured representation of data and a set of metadata describing this data. To omit the second part of the address (in-sector offset), files are usually stored starting from the sector start and occupy whole sectors (e.g.: a 10-byte file occupies the whole sector, a 512-byte file also occupies the whole sector, at the same time, a 514-byte one occupies two entire sectors).Įach file is stored in " unused" sectors and can be read later by its known position and size. This scheme is applied to optimize storage addressing and to use a smaller number to refer to any portion of information located on the storage. For example, byte 1040 on a hard disk drive will be referenced as a sector #3 and offset in sector 16 bytes (++). A sector is a group of bytes (usually 512 bytes), a minimum addressable unit of the physical storage. Generally, computer storages use the pair of a sector and in-sector offset to reference any byte of information on the storage. Any item saved to the storage gets its own cells.
A storage can be presented as a grid with a set of numbered cells (each cell is a single byte).
Each byte of information on it has its offset from the storage start known as an address and is referenced by this address. In actual fact, each storage is linear space for reading or both reading and writing digital information. Any computer file is stored on a storage medium with a given capacity.
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