Chapter 6

External Memory
Types of External Memory
• Magnetic Disk
—RAID
—Removable
• Optical
—CD-ROM
—CD-Recordable (CD-R)
—CD-R/W
—DVD
• Magnetic Tape
Magnetic Disk
• Disk substrate coated with magnetizable
material (iron oxide…rust)
• Substrate used to be aluminium
• Now glass
—Improved surface uniformity
– Increases reliability
—Reduction in surface defects
– Reduced read/write errors
—Lower flight heights (See later)
—Better stiffness
—Better shock/damage resistance
Read and Write Mechanisms
• Recording & retrieval via conductive coil called a head
• May be single read/write head or separate ones
• During read/write, head is stationary, platter rotates
• Write
— Current through coil produces magnetic field
— Pulses sent to head
— Magnetic pattern recorded on surface below
• Read (traditional)
— Magnetic field moving relative to coil produces current
— Coil is the same for read and write
• Read (contemporary)
— Separate read head, close to write head
— Partially shielded magneto resistive (MR) sensor
— Electrical resistance depends on direction of magnetic field
— High frequency operation
– Higher storage density and speed
Inductive Write MR Read
Data Organization and Formatting
• Concentric rings or tracks
—Gaps between tracks
—Reduce gap to increase capacity
—Same number of bits per track (variable
packing density)
—Constant angular velocity
• Tracks divided into sectors
• Minimum block size is one sector
• May have more than one sector per block
Disk Data Layout
Disk Velocity
• Bit near centre of rotating disk passes fixed point
slower than bit on outside of disk
• Increase spacing between bits in different tracks
• Rotate disk at constant angular velocity (CAV)
— Gives pie shaped sectors and concentric tracks
— Individual tracks and sectors addressable
— Move head to given track and wait for given sector
— Waste of space on outer tracks
– Lower data density
• Can use zones to increase capacity
— Each zone has fixed bits per track
— More complex circuitry
Disk Layout Methods Diagram
Finding Sectors
• Must be able to identify start of track and
sector
• Format disk
—Additional information not available to user
—Marks tracks and sectors
Winchester Disk Format
Seagate ST506
Characteristics
• Fixed (rare) or movable head
• Removable or fixed
• Single or double (usually) sided
• Single or multiple platter
• Head mechanism
—Contact (Floppy)
—Fixed gap
—Flying (Winchester)
Fixed/Movable Head Disk
• Fixed head
—One read write head per track
—Heads mounted on fixed ridged arm
• Movable head
—One read write head per side
—Mounted on a movable arm
Removable or Not
• Removable disk
—Can be removed from drive and replaced with
another disk
—Provides unlimited storage capacity
—Easy data transfer between systems
• Nonremovable disk
—Permanently mounted in the drive
Multiple Platter
• One head per side
• Heads are joined and aligned
• Aligned tracks on each platter form
cylinders
• Data is striped by cylinder
—reduces head movement
—Increases speed (transfer rate)
Multiple Platters
Tracks and Cylinders
Floppy Disk
• 8”, 5.25”, 3.5”
• Small capacity
—Up to 1.44Mbyte (2.88M never popular)
• Slow
• Universal
• Cheap
• Obsolete?
Winchester Hard Disk (1)
• Developed by IBM in Winchester (USA)
• Sealed unit
• One or more platters (disks)
• Heads fly on boundary layer of air as disk
spins
• Very small head to disk gap
• Getting more robust
Winchester Hard Disk (2)
• Universal
• Cheap
• Fastest external storage
• Getting larger all the time
—250 Gigabyte now easily available
Speed
• Seek time
—Moving head to correct track
• (Rotational) latency
—Waiting for data to rotate under head
• Access time = Seek + Latency
• Transfer rate
Timing of Disk I/O Transfer
Q. 01 Consider a magnetic disk drive with 8 surfaces,512
tracks per surface, and 64 sectors per track. Sector size is 1
KB. The average seek time is 8 ms, the track-to-track access
time is 1.5 ms, and the drive rotates at 3600 rpm. Successive
tracks in a cylinder can be read without head movement.
a.What is the disk capacity?
b.What is the average access time? Assume this file is stored
in successive sectors and tracks of successive cylinders,
starting at sector 0,track 0,of cylinder i.
c.What is the burst transfer rate?
a. Capacity = 8 × 512 × 64 × 1 KB = 256 MB
b. Rotational latency = rotation_time/2 = 60/(3600 × 2) =
8.3 ms.
Average access time = seek time + rotational latency
= 16.3 ms .
c. Burst rate=revolutions second × sectors revolution×
bytes sector = 3600/ 60 ×64×1 KB=3.84 MB/s
Q.02: Consider a single-platter disk with the following
parameters:
rotation speed: 7200 rpm;
number of tracks on one side of platter: 30,000;
number of sectors per track:600;
seek time: one ms for every hundred tracks traversed.
Let the disk receive a request to access a random sector on a
random track and assume the disk head starts at track 0.
a.What is the average seek time?
b.What is the average rotational latency?
c.What is the transfer time for a sector?
a. If we assume that the head starts at track 0, then the
calculations are simplified.
If the request track is track 0, then the seek time is 0; if the
requested track is track 29,999, then the seek time is the
time to traverse 29,999 tracks.
For a random request, on average the number of tracks
traversed is 29,999/2 = 14999.5 tracks.
At one ms per 100 tracks, the average seek time is therefore
149.995 ms.
b. At 7200 rpm, there is one revolution every 8.333 ms.
Therefore, the average rotational delay is 4.167 ms.
c. With 600 sectors per track and the time for one complete
revolution of 8.333 ms, the transfer time for one sector is
8.333 ms/600 = 0.01389 ms.
RAID
• Redundant Array of Independent Disks
• Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
• 6 levels in common use
• Not a hierarchy
• Set of physical disks viewed as single
logical drive by O/S
• Data distributed across physical drives
• Can use redundant capacity to store parity
information
RAID 0
• No redundancy
• Data striped across all disks
• Round Robin striping
• Increase speed
—Multiple data requests probably not on same
disk
—Disks seek in parallel
—A set of data is likely to be striped across
multiple disks
RAID 1
• Mirrored Disks
• Data is striped across disks
• 2 copies of each stripe on separate disks
• Read from either
• Write to both
• Recovery is simple
—Swap faulty disk & re-mirror
—No down time
• Expensive
RAID 2
• Disks are synchronized
• Very small stripes
—Often single byte/word
• Error correction calculated across
corresponding bits on disks
• Multiple parity disks store Hamming code
error correction in corresponding positions
• Lots of redundancy
—Expensive
—Not used
RAID 3
• Similar to RAID 2
• Only one redundant disk, no matter how
large the array
• Simple parity bit for each set of
corresponding bits
• Data on failed drive can be reconstructed
from surviving data and parity info
• Very high transfer rates
RAID 4
• Each disk operates independently
• Good for high I/O request rate
• Large stripes
• Bit by bit parity calculated across stripes
on each disk
• Parity stored on parity disk
RAID 5
• Like RAID 4
• Parity striped across all disks
• Round robin allocation for parity stripe
• Avoids RAID 4 bottleneck at parity disk
• Commonly used in network servers

• N.B. DOES NOT MEAN 5 DISKS!!!!!

RAID 6
• Two parity calculations
• Stored in separate blocks on different
disks
• User requirement of N disks needs N+2
• High data availability
—Three disks need to fail for data loss
—Significant write penalty
RAID 0, 1, 2
RAID 3 & 4
RAID 5 & 6
Data Mapping For RAID 0
Optical Storage CD-ROM
• Originally for audio
• 650Mbytes giving over 70 minutes audio
• Polycarbonate coated with highly
reflective coat, usually aluminium
• Data stored as pits
• Read by reflecting laser
• Constant packing density
• Constant linear velocity
CD Operation
CD-ROM Drive Speeds
• Audio is single speed
—Constant linier velocity
—1.2 ms-1
—Track (spiral) is 5.27km long
—Gives 4391 seconds = 73.2 minutes
• Other speeds are quoted as multiples
• e.g. 24x
• Quoted figure is maximum drive can
achieve
CD-ROM Format

• Mode 0=blank data field

• Mode 1=2048 byte data+error correction
• Mode 2=2336 byte data
Random Access on CD-ROM
• Difficult
• Move head to rough position
• Set correct speed
• Read address
• Adjust to required location
• (Yawn!)
CD-ROM for & against
• Large capacity (?)
• Easy to mass produce
• Removable
• Robust

• Expensive for small runs

• Slow
• Read only
Other Optical Storage
• CD-Recordable (CD-R)
—WORM
—Now affordable
—Compatible with CD-ROM drives
• CD-RW
—Erasable
—Getting cheaper
—Mostly CD-ROM drive compatible
—Phase change
– Material has two different reflectivities in different
phase states
DVD - what’s in a name?
• Digital Video Disk
—Used to indicate a player for movies
– Only plays video disks
• Digital Versatile Disk
—Used to indicate a computer drive
– Will read computer disks and play video disks
• Dogs Veritable Dinner
• Officially - nothing!!!
DVD - technology
• Multi-layer
• Very high capacity (4.7G per layer)
• Full length movie on single disk
—Using MPEG compression
• Finally standardized (honest!)
• Movies carry regional coding
• Players only play correct region films
• Can be “fixed”
DVD – Writable
• Loads of trouble with standards
• First generation DVD drives may not read
first generation DVD-W disks
• First generation DVD drives may not read
CD-RW disks
• Wait for it to settle down before buying!
CD and DVD
Magnetic Tape
• Serial access
• Slow
• Very cheap
• Backup and archive
Internet Resources
• Optical Storage Technology Association
—Good source of information about optical
storage technology and vendors
—Extensive list of relevant links
• DLTtape
—Good collection of technical information and
links to vendors
• Search on RAID