The typical (generalized) setup is paths -> inodes (called "refers to data" or ""something"" in my other comments to avoid using the weird terminology we've som

The typical (generalized) setup is paths -> inodes (called "refers to data" or ""something"" in my other comments to avoid using the weird terminology we've somehow adapted for naming file system things) and inodes -> actual data on the disk. Whether you actually have that setup on disk is up to the fs format, but regardless of the format it is typically useful (and as you note, generic file system interfaces like the one in linux do require this) to have this extra indirection when tracking things on the software side (ie: not necessarily the storage side, though many file systems do have this type of indirection because it is also useful on the storage side). > Your hypothetical driver would need to keep a double-mapping: from inodes to paths, and then from paths to whatever else. As I've noted in another comment, inodes (`struct inode` in linux) typically contain a lot of information. No additional mapping would be required.