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A+ Study Guide: Domain 3.0:
Operating Systems - File Systems
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Introduction:
In an operating system, the file system is the structure by which files
are organized, stored, and named. The file system determines what
features and controls you have with regards to the organization,
maintenance, and security of your data. Different file systems handle
this job differently and vary in the features that they support.
Partitions:
Partitions are configurable logical storage units on your hard drive.
Partitions and other storage units, allow you to divide a hard drive in
order to better manage the organization of your data and applications.
The following are common hard disk configurations.
- Partition - A partition is a portion of a physical
hard disk. A partition can be primary or extended
- Primary Partition - This is a bootable partition.
One primary partition can be made active.
- Extended Partition - An extended partition is made
from the free space on a hard disk and can be broken down into smaller
logical drives. There can only be one of these per hard disk.
- Logical Drive - These are a primary partition or
portions of an extended partition that are assigned a drive letter.
- Volume - This is a disk or part of a disk that is
combined with space from the same or another disk to create one larger
volume. This volume can be formatted and assigned a drive letter like
a logical drive, but can span more than one hard disk. A volume set
can be extended without starting over, however to make it smaller, the
set must be deleted and re-created.
There
are various management tools that can be used to configure drives. The
Disk Management MMC is a snap-in for the Computer Management Console in
Windows 2000 and XP. You can create partitions, volume sets, logical
drives, format disks, etc. NT 4.0 had a similar tool called the "Disk
Administrator". DOS and Windows 9x utilize the FDISK utility.
When discussing Windows file systems you need to understand what File
Allocation Tables (FAT) are. FAT is a table that an operating system
maintains in order to map the clusters (the smallest unit of storage)
that a file has been stored in. When files are written to a hard disk,
the files are stored in one or more clusters that may be spread out all
over the hard disk. The table allows Windows to find the "pieces" of
your file and reassemble them when you wish to open it.
File Systems:
Once a drive has been partitioned the way you want, you then need to
format it. Formatting is the process that installs the file system on
the drive. There are several different types of file systems that are
explained below:
|
Operating System |
Supported File Systems |
|
Windows NT 4 |
FAT16, NTFS |
|
Windows 2000 |
FAT16, FAT32, NTFS |
|
Windows 2003 |
FAT16, FAT32, NTFS |
|
Windows XP |
FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, NTFS |
Managing Drives:
In addition to the disk administration utilities previously mentioned,
information about a drive can be displayed by right clicking the drive
in My Computer or Windows Explorer and selecting "Properties". In a
Windows XP system, a window like the one below will appear.
Here you can view the
amount of used and freespace on the drive, the capacity and the file
system. The tools tab provides access to defragmentation, scandisk and
backup utilities. The Sharing tab is for sharing the drive and setting
share-level permissions on it so that it can be accessed across the
network. The security tab allows you to configure local file permissions
and the quota tab allows you to set disk quotas which limits the amount
of disk space that a user can use.
Backing up drives allows you to recover your data or even the entire
system if a catastrophe occurs. There are several different types of
backup:
- Full - copies all files and marks them as being
backed up.
- Incremental - copies only files created/changed
since last full backup and marks them as being backed up.
- Differential - copies only files created/changed
since last full backup and doesn’t mark them as being backed up.
- Daily - copies only files created/changed today
and doesn’t mark them as being backed up.
In DOS backups can be run
with the BACKUP command. There are several switches that can be added to
the command.
- /S - Forces all files and subdirectories to be
backed up.
- /M - Only modified files are backed up.
- /D - Backs up files modified after a specific
date.
- /T - Backs up files modified after a specific
time.
The backup utility can be
accessed via Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Backup and also via
right clicking on a drive in My Computer and selecting the tools tab as
previously mentioned. In Windows 2000/2003/XP, backup can also be
launched by entering ntbackup in a "Run" dialogue box.
There are several different hard drive utilities that can be found in
the various versions of Windows that are listed below:
- CHKDSK - Performs the same functions as SCANDISK
did in previous Windows versions, but is for Windows 2000/2003/XP.
- DEFRAG - Reorganizes data on the disk for optimal
disk performance. In DOS this utility was run from a DOS prompt. In
Windows 2000, 2003, and XP this utility can still be run from a prompt
or can be accessed at Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk
Defragementer.
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