C H A P T E R  14

Storage Systems

Storage devices encompass many types of devices, including hard disk drives, CDs and DVDs, USB flash drives, FireWire-based hard disks, and a file-based disk image that has been mounted as a virtual drive. For the user, a storage device appears as a volume on their desktop that they can read files from and write files to, but what the user doesn't see is the multiple drivers that work together in the kernel to make this possible.

The reason why storage devices require multiple drivers is a result of the myriad of different forms that a storage device may take. If you consider the difference between an external USB flash drive and an internal hard disk, both of which appear to the user as storage devices, you ...

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