How does contiguous and non-continguous volume work on hard disks?

215 viewsOtherTechnology

I am new to studying computer science and have been touching on the world of memory; more specifically, how partitioning and volume work. I understand, on a basic sense, how partitioning is done, but can not seem to understand how contiguous and non-contiguous volume works, or how the hard disk knows which is which. TIA!

In: Technology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

the very start of the drive contains a thing called the partition table. This table tells the OS exactly where each partition starts and ends, and what type of partition it is.

Once you know this, the OS is free to say “These 2 continuous locations are logically the same partition, even though they arent next to each other on the disk” Then, when it goes to write the file, the OS translates the partition location to the actual disk location, and writes it there. Since the OS handles all disk interaction anyway, and the OS knows what non continuous means, there is no problem

Continuous is just “here is the start and end, everything in-between is 1 partition, have at it”

You are viewing 1 out of 2 answers, click here to view all answers.