DISK GEOMETRY

• Disks consist of platters, each with two surfaces.

• Each surface consists of concentric rings called tracks.
• Each track consists of sectors separated by gaps.

tracks
surface
track k gaps

spindle

sectors
 DISK GEOMETRY
(MULTIPLE-PLATTER VIEW)

• Aligned tracks form a cylinder.

cylinder k

surface 0
platter 0
surface 1
surface 2
platter 1
surface 3
surface 4
platter 2
surface 5

spindle
 DISK CAPACITY
• Capacity: maximum number of bits that can be stored.
• Vendors express capacity in units of gigabytes (GB), where
1 GB = 10^9.
• Capacity is determined by these technology factors:
• Recording density (bits/in): number of bits that can be
squeezed into a 1 inch segment of a track.
• Track density (tracks/in): number of tracks that can be
squeezed into a 1 inch radial segment.
• Areal density (bits/in2): product of recording and track
density.
 Cont…
• Modern disks partition tracks into disjoint subsets
called recording zones
• Each track in a zone has the same number of sectors,
determined by the circumference of innermost track.
• Each zone has a different number of sectors/track
 COMPUTING DISK CAPACITY
• Capacity = (# bytes/sector) x (avg. # sectors/track) x (#
tracks/surface) x (# surfaces/platter) x (# platters/disk)
• Example:
• 512 bytes/sector
• 300 sectors/track (on average)
• 20,000 tracks/surface
• 2 surfaces/platter
• 5 platters/disk
• Capacity = 512 x 300 x 20000 x 2 x 5
= 30,720,000,000 = 30.72 GB
 DISK OPERATION
(SINGLE-PLATTER VIEW)

The disk
The read/write head
surface
is attached to the end
spins at a
of the arm and flies over
fixed
the disk surface on
rotational
a thin cushion of air.
rate

spindle
spindle
spindle
spindle
spindle

By moving radially, the

arm can position the
read/write head over any
track.
DISK OPERATION
(MULTI-PLATTER VIEW)

read/write heads
move in unison
from cylinder to cylinder

arm

spindle
 DISK ACCESS TIME
• Average time to access some target sector
approximated by :
• Taccess = Tavg seek + T avg rotation + Tavg transfer
• Seek time (Tavg seek)
• Time to position heads over cylinder containing
target sector.
• Typical T avg seek = 9 ms
• Rotational latency (Tavg rotation)
• Time waiting for first bit of target sector to pass
under r/w head.
• Tavg rotation = 1/2 x 1/RPMs x 60 sec/1 min
 DISK ACCESS TIME
• Transfer time (Tavg transfer)
• Time to read the bits in the target sector.
• T avg transfer = 1/RPM x 1/(avg # sectors/track) x 60
secs/1 min.
 DISK ACCESS TIME EXAMPLE
• Given:
Rotational rate = 7,200 RPM
Average seek time = 9 ms.
Avg # sectors/track = 400.
• Derived:
T avg rotation = 1/2 x (60 secs/7200 RPM) x 1000 ms/sec
= 4 ms.
T avg transfer = 60/7200 RPM x 1/400 secs/track x 1000
ms/sec = 0.02 ms
T access = 9 ms + 4 ms + 0.02 ms
 DISK ACCESS TIME EXAMPLE
• Important points:
• Access time dominated by seek time and rotational
latency.
• First bit in a sector is the most expensive, the rest
are free.
• SRAM access time is about 4 ns/double word,
DRAM about 60 ns
• Disk is about 40,000 times slower than SRAM,
• 2,500 times slower then DRAM.
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 and 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
ST506 format (old!)

Gap1 Id Gap2 Data Gap3 Gap1 Id Gap2 Data Gap3

Sync Sync
Byte Track Head Sector CRC Data CRC
Byte
• Foreground reading
• Find others
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
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
• Multiple Gigabyte now usual
Removable Hard Disk
• ZIP
• Cheap
• Very common
• Only 100M
• JAZ
• Not cheap
• 1G
• L-120 (a: drive)
• Also reads 3.5” floppy
• Becoming more popular?
• All obsoleted by CD-R and CD-R/W?
Speed
• Seek time
• Moving head to correct track
• (Rotational) latency
• Waiting for data to rotate under head
• Access time = Seek + Latency
• Transfer rate
• See timing comparison on p.173
• Sequential organization = .064 seconds to read 1.28 MB
• Random organization = 4.008 seconds to 1.28 MB
• Why periodic defragmentation is important!
Timing of Disk I/O Transfer
RAID
• Redundant Array of Independent Disks
• Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
• 6 levels in common use
• Not a hierarchy—but different design architectures with 3 common
characteristics:
• Set of physical disks viewed as single logical drive by O/S
• Data distributed across physical drives of an array
• Can use redundant capacity to store parity information, which guarantees data
recoverability in case of a disk failure (except RAID 0)
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
• disk striping: The procedure of combining a set of same-size disk partitions that reside on separate disks (from 2 to 32
disks) into a single volume, forming a virtual "stripe" across the disks that the operating system recognizes as a single drive.
Disk striping enables multiple I/O operations in the same volume to proceed concurrently, thus offering enhanced
performance. Microsoft Press« Computer and Internet Dictionary, 4th Edition, ©2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights
reserved.
RAID 0 Striping
RAID 0 Logical Disk
RAID 1
• Mirrored Disks
• Data is striped across disks
• 2 copies of each stripe on separate disks
• Read from either to speed up reads
• Write to both at the same time in parallel
• Recovery is simple
• Swap faulty disk & re-mirror
• No down time
• Expensive—two complete sets of drives
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 commercially available
RAID 3
• Similar to RAID 2
• Only one redundant parity 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
• Not commercially available
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
RAID Levels
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
Digital Audio Tape (DAT)
• Uses rotating head (like video)
• High capacity on small tape
• 4Gbyte uncompressed
• 8Gbyte compressed
• Backup of PC/network servers