What is the difference between inode and metadata

[Tlepolemus]

I have heard about inode and also about metadata i have a very little information on both the topics i know that both inode and metadata are used to represent some data in the files and are usually used in the Linux operating system. I needed more information on the above topics and also the information on the tasks they perform whether its similar or are they different.

[Bharat89]

Inode and metadata are two different things according to me, now when we create a file system a data structure is also created with the file which has the hidden information about the created files. Inode is an identification for each and every file created, inode number is used to identify the files. While metadata is a data that can provide information on the other aspect of the particular information of a file like for e.g if we take an e.g. of an digital audio file metadata it may contain information about its audio size, album name, album size etc.

[Roxy_jacob]

Though both inode and metadata gives you information about a particular file there is a difference in their contents like inode specifies the owners user id , the read, write, execute permission given to the user, all the information regarding the file last accessed, file last modified and file last viewed while the metadata consists of the data like the purpose of the creation of the data, data and time of the created data, author of the particular data, what kind of standards are used during the creation, thus the contents differ in inode and metadata.

[Henryosa]

Inode can only be searched by the inode number it doesn't have the file name like the metadata we can specify the file names in the metadata, in the kernel in order to look out for a file we have to specify the file name and then convert it into a particular inode number which will locate the file. So there's a lot of difference in the working of the inode and the metadata.