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Mount (computing)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mounting, in computer science, is the process of making a file system ready for use by the operating system, typically by reading certain index data structures from storage into memory ahead of time. The term recalls a period in the history of computing when an operator had to mount a magnetic tape or hard disk on a spindle before using it.
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A mount point is a term used to describe where the computer puts the files in a file system on Unix-like systems. For example, many modern Linux distributions automatically mount the CD drive as /media/cdrom, so the contents of the CD drive will appear in the /media/cdrom directory. A device can be mounted anywhere on the directory structure. Normally only the root user can mount a new file system but systems are often configured so that users may mount pre-set devices. A file system can be mounted by running the mount utility.
Mounting a remote directory is in Unix terms similar to mapping a drive in Microsoft Windows terms. In these systems, all files and directories available to the operating system and its users are to be found relative to the root directory (/), whether those directories are on the same machine or not.
Microsoft's NTFS 3 also supports Volume Mount Points through the use of reparse points, which allows volumes to be mounted at arbitrary locations in the file system in addition to the standard drive letters (e.g. C:, E:).
- Mounting Definition - by The Linux Information Project (LINFO)
