2. Basic concepts

Block

Any amount of data. A block is described by its starting position and its size.

Cluster

Group of consecutive sectors read or written in one go.

Device

Piece of hardware containing data. Hard disc drives, cdrom drives, USB pendrives, are devices. /dev/hda, /dev/sdb, are device names.

File

Files are named units of data which are stored by the operating system for you to retrieve later by name. Devices are accessed by means of their associated file names.

Partition

Every part in which a device is divided. A partition normally contains a filesystem. /dev/hda1, /dev/sdb3, are partition names.

Sector

Hardware block. Smallest accessible amount of data on a device.