Home  ›  12th Syllabus  ›  Basic storage devices concepts  ›  Linux  ›  Unit 302

Basic storage devices concepts

, , ,

 

Basic storage devices concepts

Disk partition- Disk partitions are a way of breaking up storage drive into smaller usable units. So, we can say that partition is a section of storage drive that can be treated the same way as a drive itself. Partitioning allows us to segment the available space and use each partition for a different purpose. This gives the user a lot of flexibility allowing them to easy upgrading, to install multiple operating systems, swap space, or specialised file system.

Partition Table 

A partition table is a data structure that provides basic information for a computer's operating system about the division of hard disk drive (HDD) into primary partitions.

Partitioning formats- There are two partitioning formats generally used:

  • MBR (Master boot record)
  • GPT (GUID partition table)
MBR- MBR is the traditional partitioning system which has been in use for over 30 years that's why it has some serious limitations. e.g. it cannot use disc over 2 terabytes in size and can have only maximum four primary partitions.

GPT- GPT is a more modern partitioning scheme and resolves MBR issues. GPT can have many more partitions which can be only limited by the operating system itself and there is no limitation of disk size.

Different types of partitions of MBR (Master Boot Record)

There are three types of partitions which can be created in disk management utility with MBR 

  • Primary partition- Partitions originally created are termed as primary partitions. On a MBR disk. we can create 4 primary partitions or three primary partitions and one extended partition at most.
  • Extended partition- Extended partition is a special primary partition which makes it possible to create more than 4 partitions. The primary partition thus subdivided is known as extended partition and a hard disk can hold only one extended partition.
  • Logical partition- logical partitions are sub-partitions of extended partition and one extended partition can hold lots of logical partitions.

Mount Point and Mounting

If we have a storage device and when we connect this storage device to a computer then the mounting process will happen. The operating system allocates a point that is known as a mounting point to this storage device and then we need to format this storage device using a file system such as Fat 32, NTFS ext2, ext3, etc. and after that, we can use this storage device. So this process of attaching a storage device is called mounting.

Swap Space

Swap space in Linux is a dedicated swap partition of hard disk which is used when RAM is full, then inactive pages in memory are moved to the swap space. Swap space is located on hard drives which have slower access time than RAM.

Subscribe to: Post Comments ( Atom )