A stub file is a placeholder on a user’s hard drive that is partially hosted on another storage location, such as network storage. It frees up space on the hard drive but requires uninterrupted network access to access the full file. It is used for cost-saving purposes and accessing it is slower than non-stub files.
A stub file is a computer file that appears to be on the end user’s hard drive, but is actually partially hosted on another storage location. The most common secondary location for a stub file is network storage, where information is hosted online or on a network server physically connected to the system’s network. The main benefit of using stub files is that they free up additional hard drive space for the end user, allowing more files and programs to be saved on the system. A major drawback is that accessing the stub file requires continuous, uninterrupted access to the network computer that contains the file.
Stub files get their name from the fact that they only contain “stubs” of the actual data of the corresponding files. A stub file works as a type of placeholder, reminding the computer – and the computer user – that the file is available for access. Once the end user accesses a stub file, the computer takes the location information it contains and routes it to the network device driver. The network card on the computer accesses the network storage location where the entire contents of the stub file is stored, returning the information to the end user’s computer and displaying it on the screen like any other active file. From now on, the end user can view and edit the file as if it were actually and completely contained on the physical computer’s hard drive.
Stub files are generally used as cost-saving devices. They allow organizations with significant amounts of data to move large portions of their data to low-cost storage solutions, such as magnetic tape storage or slower-speed hard drives. This allows organizations to save their expensive and fastest hard drives for vital files and programs, by moving their archives or recording files to the low-cost storage media.
Accessing stub files is generally slower than accessing non-stub files, because computers must use network resources to retrieve them, rather than collecting the data directly from the host computers’ hard drives. Besides that, the ability to access stub files depends on the constant functioning of both the network and the storage medium hosting the entire contents of the file; if either fails, any stub file becomes inaccessible until the problem is fixed.
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