Quiz 9

Question 1

What are the contents in “a file directory”?

Answer 1

A list of file names and subdirectories present in the directory

Question 2

There is no difference between (file) directories and regular files. Then, how do most of the operating systems know which files are regular files and directories?

Answer 2

It will specify the file type in the meta data and have specific permissions for a directory

Question 3

What type of file allocation method does MS FAT file systems use (contiguous, linked-list non-contiguous, or indexed non-contiguous)? Justify your solution.

Answer 3

Indexed non-contiguous because the File Allocation Table is an index for all the files that exist in the same hard drive

Question 4

What type of file allocation method does UNIX I-node file systems use (contiguous, linked-list non-contiguous, or indexed non-contiguous)? Justify your solution.

Answer 4

Non-Contiguous Indexed The inode (index node) contains pointers (or indices) to these disk blocks, enabling random access to any part of the file.

Question 5

What are the primary motivations (mention two) of using “clusters” in FAT-16 file system?

Answer 5

Speed, takes less time to access as long as they are in the same cluster
Reduced FAT table size

Question 6

What is the primary advantage of UNIX i-node file system (compared to MS FAT-16)?

Answer 6

Better disk space utilization MS FAT takes up more space for a small file

Question 7

What are the primary advantage of MS FAT-16 file system (compared to UNIX I-node)?

Answer 7

Access Speed is Better than UNIX I-node worst case is only 2 disk access while worst case for UNIX is 5 disk access