How storage is viewed

The disk space on your system and your system's main memory is viewed as one large storage area known as single-level storage. The Single-level storage example provides a visual representation of how storage is viewed.

The following figure shows how single-level storage works:

When you save a file, you do not assign it to a storage location. Instead, the system places the file in the location that ensures the best performance. One option is the data is spread in the file across multiple disk units. When you add more records to the file, the system assigns additional space on one or more disk units.