Concepts
Volumes
May be created by joining many small storage spaces into a larger one (intermediate volume).
May be created by splitting a physical storage space into smaller spaces (OS volume).
Is a collection of sectors.
for the OS those sectors are consecutive – volume level.
at the physical level, they may not be consecutive.
are structures that define the space occupied by the file system.
We need to know the volume structure to analyze its contents
if a drive is corrupted we may not be able to read the volume structure.
a volume might have been deleted in an attempt to hide data.
Why use volumes?
some OS use a volume to store RAM data when they hibernate, e. g. Linux (swap partition).
to separate the OS files from the users’ files.
to allow dual boot, e. g. windows, and Linux.
to aggregate smaller storage spaces.
to get more space for the file system.
to get redundancy and prevent data loss due to drive failures.
Partitions
are a particular case of volumes.
a partition is a set of consecutive sectors.
the confusion between partitions and volumes is common.
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