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Secondary Storage Devices


Hard drives, floppy drives
CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives
CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW
Tape drives
Network drives
Direct access vs. Sequential access
Rotation vs. Linear
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Magnetic Disks
A magnetic substance is coated on a round surface
The magnetic substance can be polarized in one of
two directions with an electromagnet (writing
data)
The electromagnet can also sense the direction of
magnetic polarization (reading data)
Similar to a read/write head on a tape recorder
(except the information is digital rather than
analogue)
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Hard Disks: Example
Top view of a 36 GB, 10,000
RPM, IBM SCSI
server hard disk, with its top
cover removed, 10 stacked
platters
(The IBM Ultrastar 36ZX)
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Hard Disk Layout
Platter
Track
Cylinder
Drive
motor
Head
motor
Head, on
moving arm
Block
Sector
Track
Head
Head
assembly
Disk Data Layout
Multiple Platters
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Hard Disk: Terminology
Platter
A round surface the disk containing a magnetic coating
Track
A circle on the disk surface on which data are contained
Head
A transducer attached to an arm for writing/reading data
to/from the disk surface
Head assembly
A mechanical unit holding the heads and arms
All the head/arm units move together, via the head
assembly
Cylinder
A set of tracks simultaneously accessible from the heads
on the head assembly
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Hard Disk: Terminology
Drive motor
The motor that rotates the platters
Typically a DC motor (DC = direct current)
The disk rotates at a fixed speed (e.g., 3600
rpm, revolutions per minute)
Head motion
A mechanism is required to move the head
assembly in/out
Two possibilities:
A stepper motor (digital, head moves in steps, no
feedback)
A servo motor (analogue, very precision positioning,
but requires feedback)

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Hard Disks
The platter is hard (e.g., aluminum)
Most hard disk drives contain more than
one platter
On most hard disk drives, the disks are
fixed (i.e., not removable)
On some hard disk drives, the disks are in
a removable pack (hence, disk pack)
Typical speed of rotation: 3600, 5400,
7200 rpm (rpm = revolutions per
minute)
Capacities: 5 MB to 1+ TB (terabyte = 2
40

bytes)

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Locating a Block of Data
Seek Time Latency Time Transfer Rate
Desired
track
Seek
Head
Transfer Latency
Note: Access time = seek time + latency
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
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Hard Disk: Terminology
Seek time
The time for the head to move to the correct track
Specified as an average for all tracks on the disk surface
Latency time
The time for the correct block to arrive at the head once
the head is positioned at the correct track
Specified as an average, in other words, the period of
rotation
Also called rotational delay

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Disk Access Times
Avg. Seek time
average time to move from one track to another
Avg. Latency time
average time to rotate to the beginning of the
sector
Avg. Latency time = * 1/rotational speed
Total Time to retrieve a disk block
Avg. seek time + avg. latency time + avg. transfer time

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Latency Example
A hard disk rotates at 3600 rpm
What is the average latency?
Period of rotation = (1 / 3600) minutes
= (1 / 3600) 60 seconds
= 0.01667 s
= 16.67 ms

Average latency = 16.67 / 2 ms
= 8.33 ms
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Factors Determining Transfer Rate
Transfer rate can be determined,
given
Rotational speed of the disk platters
Number of sectors per track
Number of bytes per sector

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Factors Determining Disk Capacity
Disk Capacity can be determined, given
No of Surfaces
No of Tracks per Surface
No of Sectors per Track
Sector Size

Consider Magnetic disk with 8 surfaces, 512
tracks per surface and 64 sectors per track
Sector size is 1kB. What is disk capacity
Ans:256MB

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Transfer Rate: Example
Q: Determine the transfer rate, in Mbytes/s, for
a hard disk drive, given
Rotational speed = 7200 rpm
Sectors per track = 30
Data per sector = 512 bytes = 0.5 Kbytes
A:
Transfer rate = 7200 x 30 = 216,000 sectors/min
= 216,000 x 0.5 = 108,000 Kbytes/min
= 108,000 / 60 = 1,800 Kbytes/s
= 1,800 / 2
10
= 1.76 Mbytes/s
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Exercise - Transfer Rate
Q: Determine the transfer rate, in
Mbytes/s, for a hard disk drive, given
Rotational speed = 7000 rpm
Sectors per track = 32
Data per sector = 1024 bytes

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Exercise - Transfer Rate
Q: Determine the transfer rate, in
Mbytes/s, for a hard disk drive, given
Rotational speed = 7000 rpm
Sectors per track = 32
Data per sector = 1024 bytes = 1 Kb
A: Transfer rate = 7000 x 32 = 224,000 sectors/min
= 224,000 x 1 = 224,000 Kbytes/min
= 224,000 / 60 = 3,733 Kbytes/s
= 3,733 / 2
10
= 3.65 Mbytes/s
Answer
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R.A.I.D. = Redundant array of
inexpensive disks

A category of disk drive that employs two
or more drives in combination for fault
tolerance and performance
Frequently used on servers, but not
generally used on PCs
There are a number of different R.A.I.D.
levels (next slide)

RAID 0
No redundancy
Data striped across all disks
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
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R.A.I.D. Levels
Level 3
Same as level 0, but also reserves one
dedicated disk for error correction data
Good performance, and some level of
fault tolerance

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