Superblock

Tags

comp-arch

Is a disk-block that contains metadata about inodes and other disk blocks.

Example of data stored on the superblock includes a journal, inodes, the location of the first inode on the disk. An important thing to note about the superblock is that it's always at a known location on disk and has a fixed size. If the OS can't find the superblock your computer may fail to boot.

Note: Modern file-systems may actually contain multiple super-blocks and a super-super-block that keep tracks of which sectors are governed by which super-blocks (helping to avoid fragmentation.)