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7 Working with Disks and Volumes
In this chapter you will find commands that are used to
initialize and test disks and volumes.
Computers use disks and partitions to store and organize data. This chapter covers the
commands that are used to manage, configure, initialize, and test disks and volumes.
Understanding Disks, Partitions, and the File System
Like UNIX, Mac OS X uses special files called device files, located in /dev, to keep track
of the devices (disks, keyboards, monitors, network connections, and so on) attached to
the computer. Device files for a disk are named /dev/diskn, where n is the number of
the disk. For example, a computer with one drive would have a device file called /dev/
disk0. If the computer has a second drive, the computer creates a second device file
called /dev/disk1, and so on. Each drive that is divided into multiple partitions has a
device file for each partition. The first partition on disk 0 would be called /dev/disk0s1,
the second partition would be /dev/disk0s2, and so on.
Although Mac OS X Server assigns a device name to each device, the files on a
particular device are not accessed in this way. A virtual file system is created where all
files on all devices appear to exist under a single hierarchy. This sets one root folder and
every file exisiting on the computer is under that folder. This is known as the
Hierarchical File System (HFS+). The root folder can exist anywhere on a network as a
shared resource.
Mounting and Unmounting Volumes
To gain access to files on a different device, you must first mount the device.
This process informs the operating system where in the folder tree you would like
those files to appear. The folder given to the operating system is the mount point.
Different volumes on a computer may have different file systems.