A storage device can be used in its entirety for a file system. It can also be subdivided for finer-grained control. For example, a disk can be partitioned into quarters, and each quarter can hold a separate file system. Storage devices can also be collected together into RAID sets that provide protection from the failure of a single disk Sometimes, disks are subdivided and also collected into RAID sets
Partitioning is useful for limiting the sizes of individual file systems, putting multiple file-system types on the same device, or leaving part of the device available for other uses, such as swap space or unformatted (raw) disk space. A file system can be created on each of these parts of the disk. Any entity containing a file system is generally known as a volume. The volume may be a subset of a device, a whole device, or multiple devices linked together into a RAID set. Each volume can be thought of as a virtual disk. Volumes can also store multiple operating systems, allowing a system to boot and run more than one operating system
Types of logical structure of a directory
Single-Level Directory
A single-level directory has significant limitations, however, when the number of files increases or when the system has more than one user. Since all files are in the same directory, they must have unique names. If two users call their data file test.txt, then the unique-name rule is violated.
For example, in one programming class, 23 students called the program for their second assignment prog2.c; another 11 called it assign2.c. Fortunately, most file systems support file names of up to 255 characters, so it is relatively easy to select unique file names
Two-Level Directory
In the two-level directory structure, each user has his own user file directory (UFD). The UFDs have similar structures, but each lists only the files of a single user. When a user job starts or a user logs in, the system’s master file directory (MFD) is searched. The MFD is indexed by user name or account number, and each entry points to the UFD for that user
Tree-Structured Directories
A directory (or subdirectory) contains a set of files or subdirectories. A directory is simply another file, but it is treated in a special way. All directories have the same internal format. One bit in each directory entry defines the entry as a file (0) or as a subdirectory (1). Special system calls are used to create and delete directories
Acyclic-Graph Directories
A tree structure prohibits the sharing of files or directories. An acyclic graph —that is, a graph with no cycles—allows directories to share subdirectories and files . The same file or subdirectory may be in two different directories. The acyclic graph is a natural generalization of the tree-structured directory scheme.
General Graph Directory
The primary advantage of an acyclic graph is the relative simplicity of the algorithms to traverse the graph and to determine when there are no more references to a file. We want to avoid traversing shared sections of an acyclic graph twice, mainly for performance reasons. If we have just searched a major shared subdirectory for a particular file without finding it, we want to avoid searching that subdirectory again; the second search would be a waste of time
