Dividing Your Data02/21/2001 In the next few articles, I'll look
at how FreeBSD stores data on your hard disk. To store data on a
hard drive, the drive must first be divided into logical storage
units, and each unit must be assigned an address. The file
system will save data to these storage units and keep track of
which storage units contain which files. Like any other version
of Unix, FreeBSD uses "inode" (index number) tables to record
where files are physically located on disk. Before any inode
tables can be created, the disk storage units must be created
and given addresses. Let's summarize the steps involved in this
process: fdiskutility is used to view and create the BIOS
partition table which defines up to four disk "slices."
disklabelutility is used to view and create the Unix partition
table which defines up to eight Unix "partitions." newfsutility
is used to actually create a "filesystem" on each Unix
partition. - Every filesystem will then maintain its own inode
table. Notice that your FreeBSD sys