File and I/O

This is the last part of our study in OS. The I/O components are often the most complex part in an OS and can occupy nearly half the code base.

Notes and Samples

Chapter 11. I/O Management and Disk Scheduling Chapter 12. File Management

About Cache

In Windows, the physical memory is allocated for disk cache and the virtual memory for running processes. The more memory is given to the disk cache, the less is available for processes. These links explain how Windows manages the disk cache. How Windows allocates physical memory to the disk cache Inside Storage Management Part 1, Part 2 - learn how Windows manages storage Inside the Cache Manager - more about the disk cache in Windows Cacheman - a shareware/freeware the lets you modify the configuration of disk cache in Windows VCMon utility in sysinternals.com - lets you inspect the disk cache hit and miss ratio

About RAID

The skinny on RAID - a good article in arctechnica RAID 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,10, 53 - some nice explanation in acnc.com Keeping up with RAID- describe nearly 10 RAID levels, in digidata.com And if you've time, it's nice to read something about Storage Area Network SAN

About file systems

FAT, FAT32, FAT32/x An enhanced file system for Win95 - though a bit old, this article explain well the deficiency of FAT16 and how FAT32 is a solution. Worth reading. Low-level FAT32 structure information NTFS The Evolution of NTFS: NTFS 5.0 NTFS file system in digit-life.com - this tells you features, and disadvantages of NTFS FAT and NTFS performance - another good article in digit-life Choosing between NTFS, FAT and FAT32- a short article in msdn NTFS file system in digit-life.com - this tells you features, and disadvantages of NTFS FAT and NTFS performance - another good article in digit-life NTFS vs. FAT, NTFS5 vs. FAT32 Inside Win2K NTFS (Nov 2000) Inside Encrypting File System (Jun 1999) Inside Windows NT Disk Defragmenting (May 1997) The challenge of defragmenting an NTFS partition (Jan 2001) NTFS documentation Linux and Unix file systems File system section in online book Linux Kernel - explain the internal of ext2, the native fils system of linux A paper on Unix Fast file system - it explains how the unix file system avoid serious fragmentation CD Compact Disk formats - touch on the various cd formats There are in fact many file systems in the world. Have a look at the listing at Yahoo.

Other related web links

To be written