Computer Organization and

Architecture
Dr. Md Nasim Adnan
 Magnetic Disc
• A disk is a circular platter constructed of
nonmagnetic material, called the substrate,
coated with a magnetizable material.
• Traditionally, the substrate has been an
aluminum or aluminum alloy material. More
recently, glass substrates have been
introduced.
• The glass substrate has a number of benefits –
– Improvement in uniformity of the magnetic film
surface to increase disk reliability
– A significant reduction in overall surface defects to
help reduce read-write errors
– Ability to support lower fly heights
– Greater ability to withstand shock and damage
 Magnetic Read and Write Mechanisms
• Data are recorded on and later retrieved from the disk
via a conducting coil named the head; in many systems,
there are two heads, a read head and a write head.
• During a read or write operation, the head is stationary
while the platter rotates beneath it.
• The write mechanism exploits the fact that electricity
flowing through a coil induces a magnetic field. Electric
pulses are sent to the write head, and the resulting
magnetic patterns are recorded on the surface below,
with different patterns for positive and negative
currents.
• The write head itself is made of easily magnetizable
material and is in the shape of a rectangular
doughnut with a gap along one side and a few turns
of conducting wire along the opposite side (see the
next Figure).
• An electric current in the wire induces a magnetic
field across the gap, which in turn magnetizes a
small area of the recording medium. Reversing the
direction of the current reverses the direction of
the magnetization on the recording medium.
• Appropriate electric currents are sent to the write
head which creates different magnetic patterns
for positive (1) and negative (0) currents.
• The traditional read mechanism is based on the
fact that a magnetic field moving relative to a coil
produces an electrical current.
• When the surface of a disk passes under the
head, it generates a current of the same polarity
as the one already recorded.
 Data Organization and Formatting
• The head is a relatively small device capable of
reading from or writing to a portion of the platter
rotating beneath it. This gives rise to the organization
of data on the platter in a concentric set of rings,
called tracks.
• Each track is the same width as the head. There are
thousands of tracks per surface.
• The next figure depicts this data layout. Adjacent
tracks are separated by gaps. This prevents, or at
least minimizes, errors due to misalignment of the
head or simply interference of magnetic fields.
• Data are transferred to and from the disk in
sectors. There are typically hundreds of sectors per
track, and these may be of either fixed or variable
length.
• In most contemporary systems, fixed-length sectors
are used, with 512 bytes being the nearly universal
sector size.
• To avoid imposing unreasonable precision
requirements on the system, adjacent sectors are
separated by intratrack (intersector) gaps.
• A bit near the center of a rotating disk travels past a
fixed point (such as a read–write head) slower than a bit
on the outside.
• Therefore, some way must be found to compensate for
the variation in speed so that the head can read all the
bits at the same rate.
• This can be done by increasing the spacing between bits
of information recorded in segments of the disk. The
information can then be scanned at the same rate by
rotating the disk at a fixed speed, known as the
Constant Angular Velocity (CAV).
• The disk is divided into a number of pie-shaped sectors
and into a series of concentric tracks.
• The advantage of using CAV is that individual blocks of
data can be directly addressed by track and sector. To
move the head from its current location to a specific
address, it only takes a short movement of the head to a
specific track and a short wait for the proper sector to
spin under the head.
• The disadvantage of CAV is that the amount of data that
can be stored on the long outer tracks is the only same as
what can be stored on the short inner tracks.
• To increase density, modern hard disk systems use a
technique known as multiple zone recording, in
which the surface is divided into a number of
concentric zones (16 is typical).
• Within a zone, the number of bits per track is
constant.
• Zones farther from the center contain more bits
(more sectors) than zones closer to the center.
• This allows for greater overall storage capacity at the
expense of somewhat more complex circuitry.
• Fixed (rare) or movable head
• Removable or fixed (CD/HDD)
• Single or double (usually) sided
• Single or multiple platter
• Head mechanism
– Contact (Floppy)
– Fixed gap (HDD)
– Aerodynamic gap (Winchester)
 Disk Performance Parameter
• When the disk drive is operating, the disk is rotating at
constant speed. To read or write, the head must be positioned
at the desired track and at the beginning of the desired sector
on that track.
• Track selection involves moving the head in a movable head
system or electronically selecting one head on a fixed-head
system. On a movable head system, the time it takes to
position the head at the track is known as seek time. In
either case, once the track is selected, the disk controller
waits until the appropriate sector rotates to line up with the
head.
• The time it takes for the beginning of the sector to reach the
head is known as rotational delay, or rotational latency.
• The sum of the seek time, if any, and the
rotational delay equals the access time, which
is the time it takes to get into position to read
or write.
• Once the head is in position, the read or write
operation is then performed as the sector
moves under the head; this is the data
transfer portion of the operation; the time
required for the transfer is the transfer time.
• In addition to the access time and transfer time, there
are several queuing delays normally associated with a
disk I/O operation.
• When a process issues an I/O request, it must first wait
in a queue for the device to be available. After a certain
time, the device is assigned to the process. If the device
shares a single I/O channel or a set of I/O channels with
other disk drives, then there may be an additional wait
for the channel to be available.
• At that point, the seek is performed to begin disk
access.
 RAID
• With multiple disks, separate I/O requests can be handled in
parallel, as long as the data required reside on separate disks.
• Further, a single I/O request can be executed in parallel if the
block of data to be accessed is distributed across multiple
disks.
• The industry has agreed on a standardized scheme for
multiple-disk database design, known as RAID (Redundant
Array of Independent Disks).
• The RAID scheme consists of seven levels, zero through six.
These levels do not imply a hierarchical relationship but
designate different design architectures that share three
common characteristics.
 RAID
1. RAID is a set of physical disk drives viewed by
the operating system as a single logical drive.
2. Data are distributed across the physical
drives in a scheme known as striping,
described subsequently.
3. Redundant disk capacity is used to store
parity information, which guarantees data
recoverability in case of a disk failure.
RAID 0
 RAID 1
• Mirrored Disks
• 2 copies of each stripe on separate disks
• Read from either to speed up
• 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
• RAID 4
• RAID 5
• RAID 6