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Defragmentation is the operation of moving file extents (physical allocation blocks) so they eventually merge, preferably into one. Doing so usually requires at least two copy operations: one to move the blocks into some free scratch space on the disk so more movement can happen, and another to finally move the blocks into their intended place.
Free (unallocated) space fragmentation occurs when there are several unused areas of the file system where new files or metadata can be written to. Unwanted free space fragmentation is generally caused by deletion or truncation of files, but file systems may also intentionally insert fragments ("bubbles") of free space in order to facilitate ...
Each entry in the FAT linked list is a fixed number of bits: 12, 16 or 32. The maximum size of a file or a disk drive that can be accessed is the product of the largest number that can be stored in the entries (less a few values reserved to indicate unallocated space or the end of a list) and the size of the disk cluster.
The drive letter syntax chosen for CP/M was inherited by Microsoft for its operating system MS-DOS by way of Seattle Computer Products' (SCP) 86-DOS, and thus also by IBM's OEM version PC DOS. Originally, drive letters always represented physical volumes, but support for logical volumes eventually appeared.
The unused space at the end of a file in a file system that uses fixed size clusters (so if the file is smaller than the fixed block size then the unused space is simply left). Often contains deleted information from previous uses of the block
A block, a contiguous number of bytes, is the minimum unit of storage that is read from and written to a disk by a disk driver.The earliest disk drives had fixed block sizes (e.g. the IBM 350 disk storage unit (of the late 1950s) block size was 100 six-bit characters) but starting with the 1301 [8] IBM marketed subsystems that featured variable block sizes: a particular track could have blocks ...
This process may be successful even after a drive is formatted or repartitioned. File carving can be performed using free or commercial software and is often performed in conjunction with computer forensics examinations or alongside other recovery efforts (e.g. hardware repair) by data recovery companies. [ 8 ]
The FAT file system is a file system used on MS-DOS and Windows 9x family of operating systems. [3] It continues to be used on mobile devices and embedded systems, and thus is a well-suited file system for data exchange between computers and devices of almost any type and age from 1981 through to the present.