Operating Systems · Storage and I/O

The file system abstraction

Files and directories as the OS's user-facing model, sitting on top of raw disk blocks.

Also known as: files, directories, inodes.

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• Hard disks and SSDs: How spinning disks and flash storage actually store and retrieve data, and why their performance shapes differ.

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• File system implementation: How a real file system, FFS, FAT, NTFS, lays out inodes, directories, and data blocks on disk.

Related topics

• File system implementation: How a real file system, FFS, FAT, NTFS, lays out inodes, directories, and data blocks on disk.