The file system use of a noncontagious space requires each file to be a linked list of disk blocks. This helps maintain a detailed ordered list of assigned blocks for each file. To maintain the lists of blocks allocated to each file, the blocked numbers in the directory may be stored using pointers from the first to the next and optionally the last block of the file. For consistency, the operating system will maintain ordered lists for all files, noncontagious and contagious.
