OSDev.org

I am now coding a program that formats my OS' HDD image in my own file system (SSFS). Now there are a lot of fields in my boot sector and Index Sector that will point to other areas in my file system and I am using LBA 28/48/64 addresses for those fields. Now I was wondering if absolute LBA addresses are more effective or should the addresses be relative? For example, in my boot sector where I have the LBA address of my Index Sector, should I put the LBA address of the Index Sector from the beginning of the media (LBA 0 ... x) or should I put the relative LBA address starting from my boot sector to ... x.

Anybody has any ideas which one is more efficient?

i guess absolute addresses would be faster, just because of the fact that you don't have to add another value to them before using.

It is difficult to see any merit in relative addresses - the address you have to supply to the hardware is absolute.

I don't know - relative addresses might allow dynamic moving of partitions And one add instruction is totally negligible compared to the delay involved in reading/writing to the HDD.

So suppose I am using Absolute LBA addresses and now I want to move a file from one partition to another. I should then just calculate the start (LBA) address of the destination partition and add it to the new location of the file in the new partition, right? But if I use relative addresses, I will either have to calculate almost nothing if the new partition has the space for the new file exactly where it was in the previous partition or I will have to calculate some more stuff if it doesn't. It's just a little confusing right now

Have any of you guys used any of these methods? could you explain why and why not? Thanks guys.