Mass-Storage Systems

Mass-Storage Systems
 Overview of Mass Storage Structure
 Disk Structure
 Disk Scheduling
 Disk Management
 Swap-Space Management
 RAID Structure
 Stable-Storage Implementation

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 Overview of Mass Storage
Structure
 Magnetic disks provide bulk of secondary storage of modern
computers
 Drives rotate at 60 to 200 times per second
 Transfer rate is rate at which data flow between drive and
computer
 Positioning time (random-access time) is time to move disk
arm to desired cylinder (seek time) and time for desired
sector to rotate under the disk head (rotational latency)
 Head crash results from disk head making contact with the
disk surface
 That’s bad
 Disks can be removable
 Drive attached to computer via I/O bus

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 Moving-head Disk Mechanism

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 Overview of Mass Storage Structure
(Cont.)

 Magnetic tape
 Was early secondary-storage medium
 Relatively permanent and holds large quantities of
data
 Access time slow
 Random access ~1000 times slower than disk
 Mainly used for backup, storage of infrequently-used
data, transfer medium between systems
 Kept in spool and wound or rewound past read-write
head
 Once data under head, transfer rates comparable to
disk
 20-200GB typical storage

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 Disk Structure
 Disk drives are addressed as large 1-dimensional arrays of
logical blocks, where the logical block is the smallest unit
of transfer.

 The 1-dimensional array of logical blocks is mapped into

the sectors of the disk sequentially.
 Sector 0 is the first sector of the first track on the
outermost cylinder.
 Mapping proceeds in order through that track, then the
rest of the tracks in that cylinder, and then through the
rest of the cylinders from outermost to innermost.

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 Disk Scheduling
 The operating system is responsible for using hardware
efficiently — for the disk drives, this means having a fast
access time and disk bandwidth.
 Access time has two major components
 Seek time is the time for the disk arm to move the
heads to the cylinder containing the desired sector.
 Rotational latency is the additional time waiting for
the disk to rotate the desired sector to the disk head.
 Minimize seek time
 Seek time  seek distance
 Disk bandwidth is the total number of bytes transferred,
divided by the total time between the first request for
service and the completion of the last transfer.

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 Disk Scheduling (Cont.)
 Several algorithms exist to schedule the servicing of disk
I/O requests.
 We illustrate them with a request queue (0-199).

98, 183, 37, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67

Head pointer 53

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 FCFS

Illustration shows total head movement of 640 cylinders.

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 SSTF
 Selects the request with the minimum seek time from the
current head position.
 SSTF scheduling is a form of SJF scheduling; may cause
starvation of some requests.
 Illustration shows total head movement of 236 cylinders.
 Shortest Seek Time First

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 SSTF (Cont.)

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 SCAN
 The disk arm starts at one end of the disk, and moves
toward the other end, servicing requests until it gets to
the other end of the disk, where the head movement is
reversed and servicing continues.
 Sometimes called the elevator algorithm.
 Illustration shows total head movement of 208 cylinders.

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 SCAN (Cont.)

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 C-SCAN
 Provides a more uniform wait time than SCAN.
 The head moves from one end of the disk to the other,
servicing requests as it goes. When it reaches the other
end, however, it immediately returns to the beginning of
the disk, without servicing any requests on the return trip.
 Treats the cylinders as a circular list that wraps around
from the last cylinder to the first one.

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 C-SCAN (Cont.)

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 C-LOOK
 Version of C-SCAN
 Arm only goes as far as the last request in each direction,
then reverses direction immediately, without first going
all the way to the end of the disk.

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 C-LOOK (Cont.)

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 Selecting a Disk-Scheduling
Algorithm
 SSTF is common and has a natural appeal
 SCAN and C-SCAN perform better for systems that place a
heavy load on the disk.
 Performance depends on the number and types of
requests.
 Requests for disk service can be influenced by the file-
allocation method.
 The disk-scheduling algorithm should be written as a
separate module of the operating system, allowing it to be
replaced with a different algorithm if necessary.
 Either SSTF or LOOK is a reasonable choice for the
default algorithm.

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 Disk Management
 Low-level formatting, or physical formatting — Dividing a
disk into sectors that the disk controller can read and
write.
 To use a disk to hold files, the operating system still
needs to record its own data structures on the disk.
 Partition the disk into one or more groups of cylinders.
 Logical formatting or “making a file system”.
 Boot block initializes system.
 The bootstrap is stored in ROM.
 Bootstrap loader program.
 Methods such as sector sparing used to handle bad
blocks.

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 Booting from a Disk in Windows
2000

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 Swap-Space Management
 Swap-space — Virtual memory uses disk space as an
extension of main memory.
 Swap-space can be carved out of the normal file
system,or, more commonly, it can be in a separate disk
partition.

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 RAID Structure
 RAID – multiple disk drives provides reliability via
redundancy.

 RAID is arranged into six different levels.

 Redundant Array of Independent/Inexpensive Disks

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 RAID (cont)
 Several improvements in disk-use techniques involve the
use of multiple disks working cooperatively.

 Disk striping uses a group of disks as one storage unit.

 RAID schemes improve performance and improve the

reliability of the storage system by storing redundant
data.
 Mirroring or shadowing keeps duplicate of each disk.
 Block interleaved parity uses much less redundancy.

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 RAID Levels

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 Stable-Storage Implementation

 To implement stable storage:

 Replicate information on more than one nonvolatile
storage media with independent failure modes.
 Update information in a controlled manner to ensure
that we can recover the stable data after any failure
during data transfer or recovery.

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