Storage Management and Caching in Operating System

6- Storage Management

To make the computer system convenient for users, the operating system provides a uniform, logical view of information storage. The operating system abstracts its physical view of storing data for its users to the logical view of data. The operating system maps files into physical media and access these files via storage devices. There are the following storage management duties, which has performed by the OS

6.1- File-System Management

The operating system is responsible for the following activities in connection with file management:

Creating and deleting files
Creating and deleting directories to organize files
Supporting primitives for manipulating files and directories
Mapping files onto secondary storage
Backing up files on stable (non-volatile) storage media

6.2- Mass-Storage Management

The operating system is responsible for the following activities in connection with Mass-Storage management:

File-space Management
Storage allocation
Disk scheduling

6.3- Caching

Caching is an important principle of computer systems. Information is normally kept in storage devices (such as main memory). As it is used, it is copied to a faster storage system; the cache; on a temporary basis. When we required any information, first OS check in cache memory if it is in the cache system use this information. If required information is not in the cache, then OS goes blow in the hierarchy and so on, as shown in blow fig.