On 6/18/2012 11:01 AM, Jacob Smith wrote:
> I fixed my hard drive problem, thank you for your help. But it got me
> wondering how Windows interacts with hard-drives. What does formatting do?
> How are directories stored? How is a file marked as deleted? How is a
> partition written to the disk? I do know a little of the physical
> architecture, I was just wondering about the data aspect.
>

I started trying to explain this, but I can't do it easily.

Formatting divides the platter's bits into a linked list of groups of 
data.   The data that is not being used is linked together.  When a file 
is created, links to the start of the file and the end of the file are 
stored, and links are adjusted in the unused data to account for the 
material being used in the file.  When a file is deleted, the starting 
link of the file is added to the chain of unused data, as well as the 
ending link.  No data is changed, but the operating system now considers 
that area free space.  (This is why there are programs to write zeros 
repeatedly to make sure all the data is gone for sensitive files.)

It's more than I can do to draw a picture here of how the links are 
manipulated, but if you do a search in Wikipedia for "linked list" you 
can find out more.

         PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
                     visit our download web page at:
                  http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml