File Systems

File system is the part of the operating system which is responsible for file management. It provides a mechanism to store the data and access to the file contents including data and programs. Some Operating systems treats everything as a file for example Ubuntu.

The File system takes care of the following issues

• File Structure

We have seen various data structures in which the file can be stored. The task of the file system is to maintain an optimal file structure.

• Recovering Free space

Whenever a file gets deleted from the hard disk, there is a free space created in the disk. There can be many such spaces which need to be recovered in order to reallocate them to other files.

• disk space assignment to the files

The major concern about the file is deciding where to store the files on the hard disk. There are various disks scheduling algorithm which will be covered later in this tutorial.

• tracking data location

A File may or may not be stored within only one block. It can be stored in the non contiguous blocks on the disk. We need to keep track of all the blocks on which the part of the files reside.