Consider a system where free space is kept in a free-space list.
a) suppose that the pointer to the free-space list is lost. can the system reconstruct the free-space list? explain your answer.
b) consider a file system similar to the one used by unix with indexed allocation. how many disk i/o operations might be required to read the contents of a small local file at /a/b/c? assume that none of the disk blocks is currently being cached.
c) suggest a scheme to ensure that the pointer is never lost as a result of memory failure.