CODEWITHSUNDEEP
operating-system
Midhun Raj
Midhun Raj

Reputation: 987

What does datablock in fat means

Here in this article it is written as

If data block 3 pointed to data block 10, but the FAT entry for 10 was -1, this means the file points to a free block, which is an error. The file system is inconsistent.

My understanding about data block is that they are chunks of continous bits.But How come one group of bits point to another group of bits.They are bits in memory right.I am having trouble understanding this please help me.Or is the author trying to state that datablock is one that is in the fat table.

Please help me.Please dont get annoyed if this is a stupid question as icouldnt find any additional simple explained resource to understand this. and my understanding about fat table is very vague.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 40

Answers (2)

Chris Dodd
Chris Dodd

Reputation: 126175

The article is confusing. When they say "data block 3 points at", they actually mean "the FAT entry for data block 3 points at", but they were being sloppy. The wikipedia article has a lot more detail. Or just google for FAT filesystem.

BTW, the article is also wrong -- generally FAT filesystems use 0 for a free block, and an all 1s value for the last cluster in a file. FAT entries are generally described as unsigned numbers, so can never be negative.

Upvotes: 3

smraj
smraj

Reputation: 152

It's not the data blocks that point to each other, it's the file system storing bookkeeping information about how the blocks are connected.

Upvotes: 0

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