Disk Space Management Methods

Operating system maintains a list of free disk space to keep track of all disk blocks which are not being used by any file. Whenever a file has to be created, the list of free disk space is searched for and then allocated to the new file. The amount of space allocated to this file is then removed from the free space list. When a file is deleted, its disk space is added to the free space list. But the problem is how to allocate space to files for effective disk space utilization and quick access. In this paper we have to consider major methods to manage free disk space/blocks.