Understanding EBS

When we run out of storage on our home PC, we usually buy a new disk drive, shut down the computer, install the disk drive, reboot the computer to recognize the new disk drive, and then log into the computer guest OS to format the new disk drive and start using it.

This type of disk storage is called block storage, which is a technology that controls storage on the computer, using a block as the storing unit. It takes the data to be stored, divides it into blocks of equal sizes, and stores the data blocks on the underlying physical storage. With block storage, a block is the unit for data storing and retrieving, and only changes to the blocks are written to the disk. For example, when you change a sentence in a Microsoft Word doc and save the doc, only the blocks that store the sentence were updated to the physical disk drive, in contrast to object storage, which uses an object (such as a fingerprint file) as a storing unit - any partial changes to the object will...