Editing File Control Block (section)

== Disk Transfer Area ==
A companion data structure used together with the FCB was the '''Disk Transfer Area''' (DTA).<ref name="Programacion_Ensamblador_MSDOS"/> This is the name given to the buffer where file contents (records) would be read into/written from. File access functions in DOS that used the FCB assumed a fixed location for the DTA, initially pointing to a part of the PSP (see next section); this location could be changed by calling a DOS function, with subsequent file accesses implicitly using the new location.

With the deprecation of the FCB method, the new file access functions which used file handles also provided a means to specify a memory buffer for file contents with every function call, such that maintaining concurrent, independent buffers (either for different files or for the same file) became much more practical.