disk operating system (operating system) (DOS) The name of a number of operating systems which include facilities for storing files on disk, often used to refer to Microsoft DOS. Such a system must handle physical disk I/O, the mapping of file names to disk addresses and protection of files from unauthorised access (in a multi-user system).
A DOS should present a uniform interface to different storage device such as floppy disks, hard disks and magnetic tape drives. It may also provide some kind of locking to prevent unintentional simultaneous access by two processes to the same file (or record). Last updated: 1998-07-08
