title: Device vs Partition vs File System vs Volume: how do these concepts relate to each other, accurately
body: <p>How do these concepts relate to each other, from a Java developer standpoint?</p>
  
  <p><strong>My question: Could someone provide explanations or some links for simple and accurate / generally accepted definitions?</strong> Tks.</p>
  
  <p>for reference, documents I found but are not clear to me:</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0508/0508063.pdf" rel="noreferrer">http://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0508/0508063.pdf</a>
  <a href="http://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0508/0508063.pdf" rel="noreferrer">http://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0508/0508063.pdf</a></p>
  
  <p>Not very lucky <a href="https://www.google.com/webhp?q=Device%20vs%20Partition%20vs%20File%20System%20vs%20Volume#q=Device%20vs%20Partition%20vs%20File%20System%20vs%20Volume" rel="noreferrer">on Google</a>.</p>
  
  <p>My initial assumptions:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>In the beginning is the physical device, and its driver.</li>
  <li>A partition is a view of a portion of the device provided by the driver, not related to file system concept</li>
  <li>A volume is the name given to a set of partitions organized in some way (RAID for instance)</li>
  <li>A file system goes on top of a volume to store data in file units.</li>
  <li>A file system provides usually a tree view of the volume</li>
  <li>A file system tree may silently include other file system trees using file system Junction / Link features</li>
  </ul>