File System Implementation: Managing Data on Disks

This lecture covers the implementation of file systems, focusing on how data is managed on persistent storage media like hard drives. It begins by defining the problem of encoding data structures on disk to store persistent information while maximizing performance and ensuring durability and reliability. The instructor explains the layout of file systems, including partitions, boot sectors, superblocks, and the role of inodes in managing files and directories. Various file allocation strategies are discussed, including contiguous allocation, linked blocks, file allocation tables (FAT), and multi-level indexing. Each method is analyzed for its efficiency, fragmentation issues, and usability, particularly in relation to file size and access speed. The lecture concludes with a summary of the key concepts, emphasizing the importance of file system APIs and the different views of a file, including inode, name, and file descriptor. Overall, the lecture provides a comprehensive overview of how file systems operate and the trade-offs involved in their design.