Common hard disk interfaces
PATA - Parallel Advanced Technology
SATA - Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SCSI - Small Computer System Interface
external disk interfaces
scsi disks
scsi hard drive names are created within which directory?
/dev
scsi hard drive nomenclature
/dev/sdx where x is any letter from a-z
scsi tape nomenclature
/dev/stx (where x is any number from 0-i)
scsi cd-rom and dvd-rom nomenclature
/dev/scdx or /dev/srx (where x is any number from 0-i)
method of scsi id assignment
increasing order based on scsi id
hotpluggable external disks
- IEEE-1394 (firewire)
True or False: Always unmount external drive before unplugging it.
True
drive partition
data structure written to specified part of a hard disk
partitioning systems
MBR primary partition limit
four primary partitions or three primary and one extended
MBR partition type codes
one-byte (two-digit hexadecimal) numbers
GPT Datastructure - Protective MBR
GPT Datastructure - header
GPT Datastructure - partition table
- can define up to 128 partitions on most disks
GPT partition scheme
partitions are numbered starting at 1 and need not be consecutive
MBR partition scheme
primary/extended/logical
LVM - Logical Volume Management
It is a system of managing logical volumes, or filesystems, that is much more advanced and flexible than the traditional method of partitioning a disk into one or more segments and formatting that partition with a filesystem
directory containing logical volume names
/dev/mapper
mount point
directory used as a way to access the filesystem on the partition, and mounting a filesystem is to link the filesystem to a mount point
- i.e. /home mount point would allow access to any subdirectory regardless of where subdirectory exists on a variety of physical drives
unified directory tree
directory structure which houses mount points
critical system directories to avoid splitting between partitions (without these Linux can’t function)
/etc /bin /sbin /lib /dev