File allocation methods (contiguous, linked, indexed) in Operating Systems - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Understanding File Allocation Methods

📖 Scenario: Imagine you are managing files on a computer disk. Files need to be stored in a way that the computer can find them easily. There are three common methods to allocate space for files: contiguous, linked, and indexed allocation.In this project, you will create simple Python data structures to represent these three file allocation methods and understand how they work.

🎯 Goal: You will build Python representations for the three file allocation methods:Contiguous allocation: files stored in one continuous blockLinked allocation: files stored as linked blocks scattered on diskIndexed allocation: files stored with an index block pointing to data blocksThis will help you visualize and understand how files are organized on disk.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a dictionary representing files and their allocated blocks for contiguous allocation

Create a helper variable representing the disk size

Create a dictionary representing files and their linked blocks for linked allocation

Create a dictionary representing files with an index block and data blocks for indexed allocation

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

File allocation methods are used by operating systems to manage how files are stored and accessed on physical disks.

💼 Career

Understanding these methods is important for roles in system administration, operating system development, and storage management.

1

Create contiguous allocation data

Create a dictionary called contiguous_files with these exact entries: 'File1': [0, 1, 2], 'File2': [3, 4], 'File3': [5, 6, 7, 8]. Each list represents continuous disk blocks allocated to the file.

Operating Systems

# Create the contiguous_files dictionary with exact entries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a dictionary with file names as keys and lists of continuous block numbers as values.

2

Add disk size configuration

Create a variable called disk_size and set it to 10 to represent the total number of disk blocks available.

Operating Systems

contiguous_files = {
    'File1': [0, 1, 2],
    'File2': [3, 4],
    'File3': [5, 6, 7, 8]
}

# Create disk_size variable and set it to 10
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just create a variable named disk_size and assign it the value 10.

3

Create linked allocation data

Create a dictionary called linked_files with these exact entries: 'File1': [0, 3, 5], 'File2': [1, 4], 'File3': [2, 6, 7, 8]. Each list represents linked blocks scattered on disk.

Operating Systems

contiguous_files = {
    'File1': [0, 1, 2],
    'File2': [3, 4],
    'File3': [5, 6, 7, 8]
}

disk_size = 10

# Create linked_files dictionary with exact entries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a dictionary with file names as keys and lists of linked block numbers as values.

4

Create indexed allocation data

Create a dictionary called indexed_files with these exact entries: 'File1': {'index': 9, 'blocks': [0, 1, 2]}, 'File2': {'index': 8, 'blocks': [3, 4]}, 'File3': {'index': 7, 'blocks': [5, 6]}. Each file has an index block and a list of data blocks.

Operating Systems

contiguous_files = {
    'File1': [0, 1, 2],
    'File2': [3, 4],
    'File3': [5, 6, 7, 8]
}

disk_size = 10

linked_files = {
    'File1': [0, 3, 5],
    'File2': [1, 4],
    'File3': [2, 6, 7, 8]
}

# Create indexed_files dictionary with exact entries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a dictionary with file names as keys and dictionaries as values. Each value dictionary has keys 'index' and 'blocks'.