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A Hard Drive is the workhorse of the

computer system.
Obtained name as inside the drive that is
used to hold the data are hard and
inflexible platters
Inflexible platter is made of aluminum
Internal or external drives

HDD ORGANISATION:

Typical configurations seen in disks today

Platter diameters: 3.7, 3.3, 2.6
RPMs: 5400, 7200, 10000, 15000

0.5-1% variation in the RPM during operation

Number of platters: 1-5

Mobile disks can be as small as 0.75
Power proportional to: (# Platters)*(RPM)2.8(Diameter)4.6
Tradeoff in the drive-design

Read/write head

Reading Faradays Law

Writing Magnetic Induction

Data-channel

Encoding/decoding of data to/from magnetic phase

changes

HDD Organization
Arm
AsSEmbly

Arm

Head

Platter

Spindle

Track

Cylinder

Head floats above the disk surface on a

cushion of moving air, which is created by
the disk spinning
Head Gap = 0.0003mm

Electro magnetic coil

Is used to read or write data to the disk

To read data from the disk, a coil is passed

over the surface.
The magnetic domain on the surface
induces / creates a current in the coil.
The direction of this current depends on the
magnetic alignment of the surface domain
underneath the coil.

To write data to a disk, a magnetic field is

created to change the alignment of the
particles.
This is done by passing a current through
the head coil in one direction or the other.
This causes a magnetic field (in one
alignment or the other) which changes the
alignment of the particles on the disk
surface.

Heads park in a landing zone

Unused area in the center of platter (when
off)

Unused AREA as parking place for heads

Referred to as Lzone, LZ, Park
Needed for older drives using stepper motors

Head crash is when the head touchs the

disk surface whilst spinning, due to
vibration/shock
Ferric oxide coating is scratched, creating
bad sectors, and in severe cases, damages
the heads.

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Parts of the disk that can no longer hold

data.
Shows up as a CRC error (CRC checksum
does not match that written on disk)

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aka bad sector remapping

Hard disk drives have extra sectors,
which are used to replace any bad
sectors that could possibly occur

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In a hard disk, the disks are called platters

The platters are usually double-sided (data
is recorded on both sides of the platter)
If the platter is double-sided it will have two
read/write heads, one for each surface
Platters spin between 3500 and 10,000
rounds per minute (RPM)
The platters are made
up of aluminum & coated
with a magnetic medium

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Hermetic sealing means that the drive is

completely sealed, so that nothing, not even
air, can get into the drive
Keeps out dust, dirt, fingerprints, hair,
moisture and other contaminants
All modern HDDs are hermetically sealed
Hermetically sealed reduces head crashes
Allows the read/write heads to float closer to
the disk surface

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The first hermetically sealed HDD had two

30MB platters - nicknamed the Winchester
drive (after a rifle, the Winchester 30/30)

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USES OF HARD DISK

GEOMETRY :

Geometry is used to determine the location

of the data on the hard drive
CHS (cylinders, heads, sectors)

Used to be critical to know geometry

Had to enter into CMOS manually

Today, geometry stored on hard drive

BIOS can query hard drive for geometry data

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Disk surface is marked out into circular

tracks, one inside the other
Concentric circles of data
1000+ tracks
The tracks are numbered from the outside,
from 0 to 1000+
Each track is divided into sectors

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Tracks and sectors

Can store
512 bytes

Sector =
small arc
of track

Track=
concentric
circle

A sector is a part (an arc)

of the track (512B)
17-43 sectors per track
As you move further out from the centre of
a platter, the distance around the track
(the circumference of the track) gets larger
This means that, the further from the
centre of the disk the more space on the
track
To make better use of this space, the
number of sectors per track increases as
you move away from the centre.
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If there is more than

one disk in the drive,
then the tracks that
are directly above or
below each other are
known collectively
as a cylinder
Tracks of same diameter,
simultaneously accessible
across both surfaces
of all the platters

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ENCODING DATA:

Hard drives store data in tiny magnetic fields called

fluxes

The flux switches back and forth through a process

called flux reversal

Hard drives read these flux reversals at a very high

speed when accessing or writing data
Fluxes in one direction are read as 0 and the other
direction as 1

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Encoding methods used by

hard drives are
Run length limited (RLL)
Data is stored using runs that are unique patterns of
ones and zeroes
Can have runs of about seven fluxes

Partial Response Maximum Likelihood

(PRML)
Uses a powerful, intelligent circuitry to analyze each
flux reversal
Can have runs of about 16 to 20 fluxes
Significantly increased capacity (up to 1 TB)

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Modified Frequency Modulation (MFM)

Early PC HDDs (Intel 8088, 8086) used MFM
technique to write data to the HDD
MFM have a fixed number of 17 sectors per
track
Wastes space on outer tracks
Run Length Limited (RLL)
Modern HDDs use RLL
encoding for writing data to the HDD
RLL stores data more efficiently than MFM by
using bit level data compression (Zone Bit
Recording (ZBR)) to compress more sectors
into the outer tracks
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The stepper motor technology and the voice coil

technology are used for moving the actuator arm
Moves the arms in fixed increments or steps
Only seen in floppies today

The voice coil technology uses a permanent

magnet surrounding the coil on the actuator arm
to move the arm
Automatically parks drive over non-data area when
power removed

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