Logical Address Vs Physical Address In Operating System: What’s the Difference?

Operating systems are the foundation of your computer, and they control how your computer interacts with the outside world. Each operating system comes with a unique set of features and functions, which is why it’s so important to know what the difference is between a physical address and a logical address in an OS.

What is a Logical Address?

A logical address is a number used by the computer to identify a specific piece of data. This number can be different from the physical address of that data, which is the number that the computer uses to locate that data on its hard drive.

The main difference between logical and physical addresses is that a logical address can be used to reference any piece of data at any time, while a physical address is specific to a particular piece of data at a given moment in time. For example, if you have a file named “My Documents” stored on your computer, its physical address would be something like 0:hda5. But if you want to access that file from inside another application, you could use a logical address like 9:hda4 to refer to it.

Logical addresses are helpful when you want to access your files from different programs or even different computers. For example, if you have a document saved on your computer in PDF format and you want to print it, you could use the logical address 9:hda4 to reference the file on your hard drive. However, if you want to share the same document with several people using different programs, each person might need their own physical address for

What is a Physical Address?

A physical address is the numeric equivalent of a street address. It uniquely identifies a computer on a network and can be used in order to send information to or from that computer. A computer’s operating system uses physical addresses to locate files, services, and other objects on the hard drive.

What is the Relationship between Logical and Physical Addresses in Operating System?

Logical addresses refer to the number of bytes that a file occupies on disk. Physical addresses, on the other hand, refer to the location of the file on disk.

Since computers use binary numbers to represent files, logical addresses are actually just a way of representing a file’s physical address in terms of bits. For example, if a computer has a total of 4GiB of storage, and you create a file with a logical address of 111100001, the computer would actually read and store the file at sector 0x00000001 (128KiB from the beginning of the drive).

While physical addresses do change as your computer grows and shrinks its storage allocation, they always refer to a specific sector on your hard drive.

There are two main reasons why you might need to know about logical and physical addresses:

1) You might need to access a file that is stored on another computer using its logical address.
2) You might need to access or troubleshoot files that are located in unusual or difficult-to-access locations on your computer’s hard drive.

What are the Differences Between a Logical and Physical Address?

Physical addresses are used to identify a specific device on a computer. Logical addresses, on the other hand, are used to access specific files and folders.

A physical address uniquely identifies a device on your computer. To find the physical address for a USB drive, for example, you would plug it in and look for the drive’s serial number or hardware identifier.

Logical addresses are also unique, but they don’t necessarily correspond to any physical devices on your computer. Instead, they refer to specific files and folders on your hard drive. For example, let’s say you want to save a file to your desktop. To do that, you can use its logical address.

The downside to using logical addresses is that sometimes you’ll have to guess at their values. If you want to save a file called “My Documents” to your desktop, for example, its logical address might be something like “C:UsersusernameDocuments”. But if you don’t know which user account username corresponds to your computer, you won’t be able to save the file at that location.

Instead, you’d need to figure out the user’s full name and create the appropriate directory structure in Windows

How are they used in Operating Systems?

Physical addresses are used by the Operating System to locate files and other objects on the hard drive. They are also used by the Operating System when it needs to send information to a device (such as a printer) or when it needs to send information to another part of the computer (for example, when the user logs in).

Logical addresses, on the other hand, are used by programs when they need to communicate with one another. For example, a program that wants to open an image file located on your hard drive might use a logical address such as “C:Documents and SettingsusernameMy Documentsimagesimage.jpg”.

What is a Logical Address and What is a Physical Address?

Logical addresses are the virtual addresses of a computer. Physical addresses are the actual addresses of a computer on a network.

A logical address is used by the operating system to access files and folders. A physical address is used by the computer’s hardware to access files and folders.

How Do We Convert an Logical Address to a Physical Address?

One of the most important concepts in operating system design is converting log- ical addresses to physical addresses. This process facilitates communication between the kernel and user programs, as well as access to hardware devices. Logical addresses refer to the numerical values used by the operating system to identify an object or location on disk. Physical addresses refer to the locations on actual storage media where these objects or locations reside. The conversion process starts by identifying the logical address of a desired object. The kernel then uses this value to lookup the corresponding physical address in its memory map. Once located, the physical address can be used by user programs and hardware devices.

Conclusion

In computing, an address is a collection of bytes that uniquely identify a physical or logical entity within the computer system. An example of an address would be the IP address for a website. In operating systems such as Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, you can think about addresses in terms of folders and files. When you open a file on your computer, Windows looks for the file in one or more folders that it has been configured to search by its name or by its filename extension (extension meaning anything after the first letter of the file’s name). For example, if you have a document named “myfile.doc” on your computer and you want to open it with Microsoft Word 2010, Windows would look for myfile.doc in either C:UsersYourUserNameDocumentsMicrosoft Word 2010Files or C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft Office 14.