File Systems and Disk Management Mark Stanovich Operating Systems COP 4610 1

File system abstraction Design Goals of File Systems Physical reality File system abstraction Block-oriented Byte-oriented Physical sectors Named files No protection Users protected from one another Data might be corrupted if machine crashes Robust to machine failures 2

File System Components Disk management organizes disk blocks into files Naming provides file names and directories to users, instead of tracks and sector numbers Protection keeps information secure from other users Reliability protects information loss due to system crashes 3

User vs. System View of a File User level: individual files System call level: collection of bytes Operating system level: A block is a logical transfer unit Typically, 4 Kbytes under UNIX A sector is a physical transfer unit 512-byte sectors on most hard disks File: a named collection of blocks 4

User vs. System View of a File A process Read bytes 2 to 12 OS Fetch the block containing those bytes Return those bytes to the process 5

User vs. System View of a File A process Write bytes 2 to 12 OS Fetch the block containing those bytes Modify those bytes Write out the block 6

Ways to Access a File People use file systems Design of file systems involves understanding how people use file systems Sequential access—bytes are accessed in order Random access (direct access)—bytes are accessed in any order Content-based access—bytes are accessed according to constraints on byte contents e.g., return 100 bytes starting with “aye carumba” 7

File Usage Patterns Most files are small, and most references are to small files e.g., .login and .c files Large files use up most of the disk space e.g., multimedia files Large files account for most of the bytes transferred between memory and disk 8

File System Design Constraints High performance Efficient access of small files Many small files Used frequently Efficient access of large files Consume most disk space Account for most of the data movement 9

Some Definitions A file contains a file header, which associates the file with its disk sectors data block location name File header 10

Some Definitions A file system needs a disk allocation bitmap to represent free space on the disk, one bit per block 11

Disk Allocation Policies Contiguous allocation Link-list allocation Segment-based allocation Indexed allocation Multi-level indexed allocation Hashed allocation 12

Contiguous Allocation File blocks are stored contiguously on disk To allocate a file, Specify the file size Search the disk allocation bitmap for consecutive free blocks data block location data block location number of blocks File header 13

Pros and Cons of Contiguous Allocation + Fast sequential access + Ease of computing random file locations Adding an offset to the first disk block location - External fragmentation - Difficulty in growing files 14

Linked-List Allocation Each file block on a disk is associated with a pointer to the next block A special marker to indicate the end of the file e.g., MS-DOS file system File attribute table (FAT) data block location data block location next block entry next block entry File header 15

Pros and Cons of Linked-List Allocation + Files can grow dynamically with incremental allocation of blocks - Sequential access may suffer Blocks may not be contiguous - Horrible random accesses May involve multiple sequential searches - Unreliable A corrupted pointer can lead to loss of the remaining file 16

Indexed Allocation Uses a preallocated index to directly track the file block locations data block location data block location data block location File header 17

Pros and Cons of Indexed Allocation + Fast lookups and random accesses - File blocks may be scattered all over the disk Poor sequential access Needs defragmenter - Needs to reallocate index as the file size increases 18

Segment-Based Allocation Needs a segment table to allocate multiple, contiguous regions of blocks begin, end blocks begin, end blocks begin, end blocks File header 19

Pros and Cons of Segment-Based Allocation + Relax the requirements for large contiguous disk regions - Fragmentation decreases contiguous blocks Larger and larger table needed to locate all blocks - Random accesses not as fast as pure contiguous allocation Must locate begin and end block that contains the target byte(s) 20

Multilevel Indexed Allocation Certain index entries point to index blocks, as opposed to data blocks (e.g., Linux ext2) data block location 12 data block location data block location index block location data block location data block location data block location index block location index block location index block location File header 21

Multilevel Indexed Allocation A single indirect block contains pointers to data blocks A double indirect block contains pointers to single indirect blocks A triple indirect block contains pointers to double indirect blocks 22

Pros and Cons of Multilevel Indexed Allocation + Optimized for small and large files Small files accessed through the first 12 pointers Large files can grow incrementally - Multiple disk accesses to fetch a data block under triple indirect block - Largest file size capped by the number of pointers - Arbitrary file size boundaries among levels 23

Hashed Allocation Allocates a disk block by hashing the block content to a disk location data block location data block location data block location data block location data block location data block location Old file header New file header 24

Pros and Cons of Hashed Allocation + File blocks of the same content can share the same disk block to save storage e.g., empty blocks + Good for backups and archival Small modifications to a large file result in only additional storage of the changes - Poor disk performance 25