An Introduction To inodes
OpenSource For U, Friday, June 6th, 2025
Understanding inodes can be invaluable for troubleshooting disk-space issues, optimising filesystem performance, and recovering deleted files.
An inode (short for 'index node') is the link between a file name and its physical location on a storage device. In the UNIX and Linux operating systems, inodes are data structures used to hold metadata about files and directories.
A filesystem is how an operating system organises and stores files on a storage device. Each filesystem on the computer has its own separate set of inodes. In short, each filesystem mounted on a computer has its inodes, which are stored in a common table. An inode number can be used more than once but not by the same filesystem. The filesystem ID is paired with the inode number to create a unique identification label.