The file system can be viewed logically as consisting of three parts. In Chapter
11, we examine the user and programmer interface to the file system. In
Chapter 12, we describe the internal data structures and algorithms used by
the operating system to implement this interface. In this chapter, we begin a
discussion of file systems at the lowest level: the structure of secondary storage.
We first describe the physical structure of magnetic disks and magnetic tapes.
We then describe disk-scheduling algorithms, which schedule the order of
disk I/Os to maximize performance. Next, we discuss disk formatting and
management of boot blocks, damaged blocks, and swap space. We conclude
with an examination of the structure of RAID systems.