Question

This is a subject that I have never found a suitable answer to, and so I was wondering if the helpful people of Stack Overflow may be able to answer this.

First of all: I’m not asking for a tutorial or anything, merely a discussion because I have not seen much information online about this.

Basically what I’d like to know is how one designs a new type of partition format, and then how it is capable of being interfaced with the operating system for use?
And better yet, what qualifies one partition format to be better than another? Is it performance/security, filename/filesize? Or is there more to it?

It’s just something I’ve always wondered about. I’d love to dabble in creating one just for education purposes someday.

Answer 1

OK, although the question is broad, I’ll try to dabble into it:

1. Assume that we are talking about a ‘filesystem’ as opposed to
   certain ‘raw’ partition formats such as swap formats etc.
2. A filesystem should be able to map from low-level OS, BIOS, Network or Custom calls into a coherent file-and-folder file’ names
   that can be used by user applications. So, in your case, a
   ‘partitition format’ should be something that presents low-level
   disk sectors and cylinders and their contents into a file-and-folder
   abstraction.
3. Along the way, if you can provide features such as less fragmentation, redundant nodes indexes, journalling to prevent data
   loss, survival in case of loss of power, work around bad sectors,
   redundant data, mirroring of hardware, etc. then it can be
   considered better than another one that does not provide such
   features. If you can optimise file sizes to match usage of disk
   sectors and clusters while accommodating very small and very large
   files, that would be a plus.
4. Thorough bullet-proof security and testing would be considered essential for any non-experimental use.
5. To start hacking on your own, work with one of the slightly older filesystems like ext2. You would need considerable
   build/compile/kernel skills
   to get going, but nothing monumental.