Red Hat LINUX ES 2.1 -, Installation Manual

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Appendix D. An Introduction to Disk Partitions 79
Figure D-3. Disk Drive with a Different Filesystem
Of course, writing a filesystem to disk is only the beginning. The goal of this process is to actually
store and retrieve data. Let us take a look at our drive after some files have been written to it.
Figure D-4. Disk Drive with Data Written to It
As Figure D-4 shows, 14 of the previously-empty blocks are now holding data. However, by simply
looking at this picture, we cannot determine exactly how many files reside on this drive. There may
be as few as one or as many as 14 files, as all files use at least one block and some files use multiple
blocks. Another important point to note is that the used blocks do not have to form a contiguous
region; used and unused blocks may be interspersed. This is known as fragmentation . Fragmentation
can play a part when attempting to resize an existing partition.