>This thread is prompted by the discussion on-going in thread#692378.
>
>Hopefully, by the end of this thread, we can all gain a clearer and accurate understanding of how data is physically stored on a HD and how it is retrieved/written for use in programs. The idea is that people who KNOW will contribute corrections or clarifications as may be needed. I will then produce a final document incorporating "the true story of an I/O operation" and mark it as the solution for the thread.
>I'll get it started by describing my understanding of this stuff...
>...

Jim, you won't hear me say that your writing is even more extensive than mine :-)
BTW, it's not overheaded and just fine (opposed to my writing). However :

IMHO the subject is far too extensive to ever work it out. Too many sub-subjects in it !
Anyway, it would be my idea to let the respondents subsequently pick a subject(-area) from your list, and put each of them in separate messages ready for their own conclusions. I hope it is the good idea. I will start a few, so we can see how it looks like.

One remark in here :
Personally I wonder whether the physical area has to be in it. Of course, it is good for a background, but too many varieties exist IMO (think of CD like storage). Furthermore, it might be the idea to accept all in the physical areas "as is", assuming that in that aera 1. all is ever okay and 2. who is capable to deal with problems in this area ? (as the supposed objective of this thread). OTOH, with our corruption problem we are right today down to the level of peeking into the disk sectors (IOW, right through all the caches) ...

Cheers Jim,
Peter