Formatting Hard Disks; File Systems; A.7 F Ormatting H Ard D Isks - ACRONIS DISK DIRECTOR SERVER 10.0 User Manual

Chapter 6. Hard Disk And File
A.7

Formatting Hard Disks

Within each of the partitions, information has to be organized in a way understandable to
the operating system using that partition. This organization is the file system.
As a rule, a formatting program performs the following functions:
It creates the boot record
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It creates the file allocation table (FAT)
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It identifies and marks bad clusters on the disk so they are not ever used afterwards
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After formatting, logical disks are organized as follows:
Logical disks start with the boot sector
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One or several copies of the file allocation table (FAT) are placed after the boot sector
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A root folder is created
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The data area is created
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Each logical disk has to be formatted with the FORMAT command separately.
A.8

File Systems

The logical structure that has been created on the hard disk is supported by means of the
operating system. The file system itself presents the information on the disk as an
ensemble of files and folders.
For the user, a file is a unit of storage of logically connected information, including texts,
graphics, and sound. For data storage organization, a file is a chain of connected sectors
or clusters. A cluster is a unit of several sectors. (Sectors are characteristic for file
systems supported by various versions of Windows.)
Operating systems support file systems on hard disks (or disk partitions) by allowing you
to create, copy and delete files and folders.
At present, the most widely used file systems for PCs are the following two:
FAT16/FAT32 (file allocation table) for DOS, OS/2 and
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Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP;
NTFS (Windows NT file system) for Windows NT/2000/XP.
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Systems
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