What is the difference between RDSK and DSK?

RDSK and DSK are two aspects of the Unix environments. They are associated with hard drives that are in our computers and devices. Many may think they have the same things, but they do not. DSK is seen as a block device path.

Here a person is able to find all of the drives that have been formatted, and they are ready to use. RDSK differs because it contains all drives that have not been formatted. This is why it is referred to as raw because the drives are in their raw format and have not yet been changed from their original state.

If you are using mobile devices that run on the Unix operating system, RDSK and DSK are two paths for different kinds of hard drives in your device. Although both might look similar, they are both different. DSK is often described as a block device path, whereas RDSK is also known as Raw device path.

In DSK, you will see all the formatted drives that you can use to store data. On the other hand, RDSK contains drives that are yet to be formatted. The explanation given on RDSK is the reason the device path is known as Raw.

While the operating system must handle the requests to all the drives that are contained in DSK, this task is handled by the drive and does not need any permission from the OS before RDSK requests can be processed. Another difference is that it is easier to communicate via RDSK than through DSK.

RDSK and DSK are basically two different device paths in the UNIX like environments where you will actually find most of your hard drives. For most people, it seems to be very similar because it seems as if they actually do have the same content, but they are not. DSK is basically a block device path where one will find all the formatted drives which are ready to be used.

RDSK In comparison is a raw device path that actually contains all drives which have not been formatted yet, and they are thus referred to as RAW. The requests of DSK requests are processed by the Operating System while the request of RDSK is processed by the drive directly. It is very much complicated to communicate via RDSK than it is to communicate through the DSK. While the DSK contains formatted drives, the RDSK contains drives, which are unformatted drives.

RDSK and DSK might look the same just because they are similar in terms of content, but there are some differences between the two. One of the ways to differentiate between RDSK and DSK is to think of the former as a raw device path, and the latter as a block device path. All formatted drives are stored in DSK.

In contrast, RDSK houses drives that are yet to be formatted, and that is why they are usually described as raw. While the operating system helps to retrieve the bits of data that are stored in DSK, the operating system can't retrieve any data from RDSK because the operating system can't process the requests for drives that are stored in RDSK.

Since the operating system has control over the DSK, the content of DSK enjoys things like optimization and buffering. It is easier to communicate via DSK compared to RDSK.