filesystemsblock-device

Non-block file systems

I was wandering if there is a filesystem that is non-block based.

Every system I know stores or retrieves chunks of fixed size (the blocks, or clusters).

Is there a filesystem that will allow to write or read a single byte, in the context of external storage, as hard disk, flash memory etc?

I googled around, but I could't find anything conclusive.

Thanks.

Solution

  • There's a good reason you won't find it: none of these underlying storage technologies support byte addressing. Flash drives and hard drives connected with SATA or SCSI are all divided into either 512-byte sectors or 4 KiB sectors. Even if you need only one byte from a sector, you have to read the whole thing.

    Part of what a filesystem does is provide an abstraction on top of these different storage technologies.