The Multi-Boot Configuration Handbook

Understanding Filesystems

Consider the following task: You possess a gigantic roll of paper onto which you want to glue copies of all your important documents—your will, your car loan paperwork, your child's kindergarten drawings, and so on. Add in your less important and temporary documents, such as grocery shopping lists, directions to the dentist's office, and so on. Aside from being physically unwieldy, this method of data storage presents certain problems of efficiency. Even assuming you can paste over old documents, there's the question of locating whatever you need when you need it. On a truly long roll, you might search for hours or days before finding what you want. You might try to allocate space by subject, but what happens if you ...