Outline

Fundamental of HDD „ Head Parking and the Landing Zone

Load/Unload Technology
Technology (3) „

„ Tracks, Cylinders, and Sectors

„ Data Addressing
„ Zone Bit Recording
Data Storage Technology Research Unit
Nakhon Pathom Rajabhat University „ Data Transfer Rate
Assistant Prof. Piya Kovintavewat, Ph.D.
E-mail: piya@npru.ac.th „ Increasing Areal Density
URL: http://home.npru.ac.th/piya

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Head Parking and the Landing Zone „ For this reason, most disks set aside a special track
that is designated to be where the heads will be
„ Hard disks work by having the read/write heads fly over placed for takeoffs and landings.
the surface of the disk platters.
„ Appropriately, this area is called the landing zone, and
„ This floating action occurs only when the platters are
spinning. no data is placed there. The process of moving the
heads to this designated area is called head parking.
„ When the platters are not moving, the air cushion
dissipates, and the heads float down to contact the „ IBM has developed an alternative to conventional
surfaces of the platters ⇒ potential for damage head parking.
„ While the platters and heads are designed with the
knowledge in mind that this contact will occur, it still makes
sense to avoid having this happen over an area of disk
where there is data!
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Head Load/Unload Technology
„ Instead of letting the heads fall down to the surface of
the disk when the disk's motor is stopped, the heads
are lifted completely off the surface of the disk while
the drive is still spinning, using a special ramp.
„ When the power is reapplied to the spindle motor, the
process is reversed: the disks spin up, and once they
are going fast enough to let the heads fly without
contacting the disk surface, the heads are moved off
Diagram showing how IBM's load/unload ramp technology
the "ramp" and back onto the surface of the platters.
functions. (One head and surface is shown; there would be a
„ IBM calls this load/unload technology. different ramp for each head and surface the disk has.)

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Track, Cylinder, and Sector

„ Platter ⇒ track ⇒ sector (512 bytes)
„ Track:
‰ A concentric set of magnetic bits on the disk is called a
track.
‰ Each track is divided into 512 bytes (usually) sectors.
„ Sector:
‰ A part of each track defined with magnetic marking and an ID
number.
‰ Sectors have a sector header and an error correction code
(ECC).
‰ In modern drives, sectors are numbered sequentially.

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 „ Each platter uses two heads ⇒ the top and the bottom
„ The heads are locked together on an assembly of head
arms.
‰ All the heads move in and out together
‰ Impossible to have one head at track 0 and another at
track 1000.
„ The track location of the heads is commonly referred to
as a cylinder number.
„ A cylinder is basically the set of all tracks that all the
heads are currently located at.

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„ Cylinder:
Data Addressing
‰ A group of tracks with the same radius is called a cylinder.
„ CHS mode uses "cylinder, head, sector" to refer to a data
„ Data addressing: block in HDDs
‰ Two methods for Drive's data addressing: ‰ No translation done at the BIOS level
„ CHS (cylinder-head-sector) ⇒ Used on most IDE drives ‰ Limit to 1,024 cylinders, 16 heads and 63 sectors, or 504 MB

„ LBA (logical block address) ⇒ Used on SCSI and „ Logical Block Addressing (LBA)
enhanced IDE drives. ‰ Each sector is instead assigned a unique "sector number", from
0, 1, 2, … (N-1)
„ N = number of sectors on the disk
‰ Must be supported by BIOS, OS, and HDD
‰ All newer hard disks support LBA ⇒ Support high capacity

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Zoned Bit Recording
„ Of course, the tracks are concentric circles, and the
ones on the outside of the platter are much larger than
„ One way that capacity and speed have been improved the ones on the inside.
on hard disks over time is by improving the utilization of „ Since there is a constraint on how tight the inner circles
the larger, outer tracks of the disk. can be packed with bits, they were packed as tight as
„ The first hard disks were rather primitive affairs and their was practically possible given the state of technology,
controllers couldn't handle complicated arrangements and then the outer circles were set to use the same
number of sectors by reducing their bit density.
that changed between tracks.
„ This means that the outer tracks were greatly
„ As a result, every track had the same number of underutilized, because in theory they could hold many
sectors. The standard for the first hard disks was 17 more sectors given the same linear bit density
sectors per track. limitations.

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„ To eliminate this wasted space, modern hard disks

employ a technique called zoned bit recording (ZBR).
„ Tracks are grouped into zones based on their distance
from the center of the disk
‰ Each zone is assigned a number of sectors per track.
„ Normally, the outer tracks have more sectors per track
than the inner tracks.
‰ Pack more data onto the outer tracks
„ To allow for more efficient use of the larger tracks on
the outside of the disk.

Zone Bit Recording

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AREAL

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Areal Density

Areal density = BPI x TPI (Gbits/in2)

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 „ Transfer rate As of 2008:
‰ The data transfer rate at the inner zone ranges from
44.2 MB/s to 74.5 MB/s
‰ The data transfer rate at the outer zone ranges from
74.0 MB/s to 111.4 MB/s
„ Remark:
‰ One interesting side effect of this design (i.e., ZBR) is
that the raw data transfer rate (or the media transfer
rate) of the disk when reading the outside cylinders is
much higher than when reading the inside ones.

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„ This is because the outer cylinders contain more data, but

Increasing Areal Density
the angular velocity of the platters is constant regardless
of which track is being read. „ HDD capacity is measured by Areal Density
„ Since hard disks are filled from the outside in, the fastest „ To hold more data, need more TPI and BPI
data transfer occurs when the drive is first used. „ As capacity increases, bit sizes must decrease
„ Sometimes, people benchmark their disks when new, and ‰ More difficult to write and read the magnetic signal
then many months later, and are surprised to find that the
„ Increasing the areal density (BPI and/or TPI) is difficult
disk is getting slower!
‰ Require many technological advances and changes to
„ In fact, the disk most likely has not changed at all, but the various components of HDD
second benchmark may have been run on tracks closer to
the middle of the disk.

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„ When the data is packed closer and closer 1989 Today

‰ Cause ⇒ interference
‰ Solution ⇒ Reduce the strength of the magnetic signals
stored on the disk
„ Must ensure that the signals are stable and the heads are
sensitive and close enough to the surface to pick them up tracks
„ Every few years a read/write head technology
bits
breakthrough enables a significant jump in density.
‰ That’s why HDD has been doubling in size so frequently. Less magnetic
signal to read

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Current Areal Density Hard Disk Capacity Growth

1990 2004
14 YEARS Caviar
Caviar
76,000 Tracks / inch (TPI) 250 GB (250,000 MB!)
20 MB Technical Specs...
Physical Parameters: Physical Parameters:
Cylinders = 782 Cylinders = 74,686
Heads =2 Heads = 6
~660,000 data bits / inch Sectors/track = 27 Sectors/track = 506 – 945
also defined as (660 Kbpi) Sectors/drive = 42,228 Sectors/drive = 488,397,168
RPM = 4500 RPM = 7200
Data Density: Data Density:
Bits/inch (BPI) = 22Kb Bits/inch (BPI) = 660Kb
Disk spins at 7200 RPM
Tracks/inch(TPI) = 1021 Tracks/inch(TPI) = 76,000

„ In 1 inch, the read/write head can differentiate 660,000 data bits In the same 3.5” form factor, the hard disk can
„ Also in 1 inch, it can place about 76,000 tracks now store >12,500 times more data

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