Clusters and File Allocation

One of the most important things that an operating system does is to manage the use of disks and other storage media. (After all, DOS does stand for Disk Operating System). The key question is: given that we have a disk that can store a certain amount of information, and a bunch of files and directories (of varying sizes and descriptions) that need to use this space, how do we organize and manage it efficiently?

Various operating systems have come up with different ways of managing the organization and allocation of disk space to files. This section describes how the FAT file system allocates space to files and manages the use of each disk volume.

Next: Clusters (Allocation Units)