Windows File system

How files are stored on the hard drive in windows operating system.

What is disk partition?

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Disk partition is the logical division of the hard drive. During this period a Master boot record or Guide partition table is created base two standards, the Basic input out standard (BIOS) for master boot record and Unified Extensible firmware interface (UEFI) for Guide partition table (GPT).

The master boot record is located on the first sector of a disk. The specific address on the disk is Cylinder: 0, Head: 0, Sector: 1. This part of the hard drive  holds the operating system which is loaded into the computer main memory during boot process.

For the partition to hold data, it has to be formatted. During formatting a file system is created either with file allocation table (FAT) for early versions of windows or New Technology File system (NTFS) for windows version from Window NT to windows 10.

What is File Allocation Table (FAT)

FAT was created as a windows file standard by Microsoft in 1977. FAT has different version like FAT 32, EX FAT and FAT 16. FAT is still in use till today on portable storage devices. FAT uses sectors to store data.

What is a sector?

A sector is a minimum storage unit of a hard drive. It’s a subdivision of a track on a optical disc. Each sector stores a fixed amount of user-accessible data, traditionally 512 bytes for hard disk drives (HDDs) and 2048 bytes for CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs. The small size of a sector makes stored files scattered all over the hard drive (HDD) therefore, causing the read/write head of the hard drive to spine round the hard drive just to retrieve a single file.

What this means is that if a file size is greater than a sector, the single file will be spread across different sectors. These chunks of files are called fragmented file. Scattered files on the hard drive are can cause hard drive to crash easily. To solve this problem Microsoft introduced a new file system in 1993 known as New Technology File System (NTFS).

What is New Technology File System (NTFS). CONTINUE HERE