Hard Disk Drives

The Soul of your Computer

 Mechanically Speaking
• Individual Disks, or Platters
• Read/Write heads for each platter on
actuator arms controlled by servo motor
 At arm’s length
• Platters are made of aluminum (hence
“hard”) with magnetic media on each face.
• The read/write heads “float,” or fly, above
the surface of disk Read/Write
head

Fingerprint

Media
Aluminum
 Encoding Methods
• Old methods:
– FM. Frequency Modulation. Bit/Timing/Bit
– MFM. Modified FM. Timing after two 0’s
• Current methods:
– RLL. Run Length Limited. Use short patterns
to represent longer ones. 1991
– PRML. Partial Response Maximum Likelihood
 Even more capacity

• Stand the magnets on their nose

• Perpendicular recording:

• First used in iPod, now standard for platter

drives
 Moving the arms
• Stepper motors
– Moves arm in fixed amounts (angular)
– Data transfer errors as motor wears
– Thermal expansion errors
– Needed to “Park” the heads over non-data
area before moving drive
– Floppy drives still use stepper motors
 Moving the arms
• Voice coil “motor”
– Same idea as the cone of a speaker
 Voice Coil
• Don’t need to “Park” the heads – they
move automatically when power removed.
• No contact means no wear, no thermal
issues, faster movement
• Can use one disk surface for positioning
 Data Storage
• Where will we put the data we want to
store?
• How will we know how to get back to that
data the next time we want to use it?
• It turns out that three values will get you
positioned at a known spot. These three
values are called…
 Geometry
• Every model of drive uses a different
geometry – total frustration years ago
• Three values used today: Heads,
Cylinders and Sectors per track (CHS).
• Two obsolete values: write precomp and
landing zone
 Heads
• The number of heads (and thus the
number of platters) the drive has installed
• Two heads per platter – but a drive may
use one head for its own use; thus we can
have an even, or odd, number of heads for
data use.
 Cylinders
• Also called “Tracks”
• If we hold the heads still for a moment and
allow the platters to spin, the heads will
describe a circle
Track
platter

Lots of tracks: use concentric circles (same center point, different diameter)

Platter !
 Sectors per track
• Slice each disk like a pie – each part of a
track is called a sector
• Multiple sectors are called a cluster or
allocation unit
• A sector holds 512 Bytes (or less) of data
 The other two
• Write Precompensation Cylinder. Where
the data encoding distance changed
• Landing Zone. Where the heads went
when parked.
 Talk to the drive
• IDE. Integrated Device Electronics. Move
the controller circuitry to the drive. 1990
Replaced two separate pieces that were
joined by two ribbon cables.
 Talk to the drive, cont.
• SCSI – Small Computer System Interface,
that discussion is coming shortly…
 IDE/ATA
• Started showing up around 1990
• Originally just parallel interface, now called
PATA – Parallel AT Attachment Interface
• SATA – Serial AT Attachment Interface.
Started showing up around 2003
Logical Block Diagram
 PATA or IDE drives
• Western Digital and Compaq in 1989
• Gave it to ANSI for formal specification
• Used the AT BIOS routines and two drives
up to 504MB (when a 10 MB was huge!)
• Enhanced IDE (EIDE) in 1991
• Ultra- DMA in about 1994
 Physical Connection
• Here is the back of a PATA disk drive:

Jumper
Block

40-pin Pin 1 Power

connector connection
 The other end
• “Controllers” (really just pin connectors)
 Connecting Cable
• 40 pins and either 40 wires (Ultra ATA-33)
or 80 wires (+40 grounds) for ATA-66,-100
and -133
 Setting the Jumper
• Because we can connect two drives, we
need to distinguish between the two
• “Master” and “Slave” – Typically we boot
from Master drive, but could boot from
Slave drive
 Another Drive
• Jumper location on back of drive
 If I don’t know…

• Look around on the drive for jumper block

• Read the label
• Go to drive manufacturer’s web site for
information
• Some drives have a “Single” setting that
you have to use if only one drive installed
 On a 40-wire cable ONLY
• Drive to connector is optional:
 ATAPI
• Advanced Technology Attachment Packet
Interface, part of ATA-2 per Michael
• Allows CD, DVD and Zip drives to connect
to IDE cable(s) and controller
• Began at about 24x CD
• Scott Mueller says it showed up in ATA-4
• Higher capacities, support for two more
devices (total of four)
 Translation, ATA-2
• Translates cylinder and head values
• We know that 16*2 (32) is the same as 4*8
(32, again), so we fib to CMOS what the
“Logical” CHS values are, not the
“Physical” values
• BIOS uses logical values, controller
converts to physical values
• Use “extra” bits to allow up to 256 heads
 Sector Translation

Shift numbers by 16x

 ATA-3
• Added S.M.A.R.T. – Self-monitoring,
Analysis, and Reporting Technology
• In theory, it is to help predict when drive
will fail, but it generally is not used
 ATA-4
• Introduced Ultra-DMA (does not use the
old DMA controller)
• Introduced the 80-wire cable (still 40 pins)
– optional usage meant no usage
• UDMA/33 – 33 MBps max transfer rate
• 1996 – 1998 timeframe
 LBA
• Logical Block Addressing
• Divide total number of sectors (C*H*S) to
get “new” C, H values leaving S=63
• (1024)(256)(63)(512)=8.4 GB
• Both the BIOS and hard disk drive have to
be capable of LBA
 INT 13h Extensions to LBA
• Breaks the 8.4 GB limit
• Collect a lot of the bits (plus some
previously unused bits) to allow 2^28
address bits
• Max drive size moves up to 137 GB
• Around 2000
 ATA-5
• UDMA/66 – 66 MBps
• 80-conductor cable now mandatory else
the drive slows down transfer rate;
positions on cable are now standardized
• 1998 – 2000 timeframe
 More on the cable
• ATA/66 requires an 80-wire cable.
• Contrary to Michael, you CAN use ’66
drive and ’66 controller with 40-wire cable,
it just runs slow but no data loss.
• Actually, the BIOS will whimper at you at
each startup about the cable.
 ATA - 6
• UDMA/100
• LBA addressing from 2^24 to 2^48 sectors
which breaks 137 GB limit
• 2000 – 2002
• Mechanically, we are still at about 60
MBps from read/write head to controller
card (on the drive). Add buffer on drive.
 ATA - 7
• Introduced SATA drives (-1 and -2; 150
and 300 MBps)
• UDMA – 133; never made it to mass
production
 Drive Maximums
• Prior to 1995 – 528 MB
– BIOS CHS (1024,16, 63) limit
• Prior to Jan 1998 – 8.4 GB
– “Logical” heads to 256 (LBA)
• Prior to Sept 2002 – 137 GB
– Interrupt 13 (Int13) extensions; feed drive
stream of addressable sectors
Now no limit with 2^48 bits (up from 2^24) but we
stop at 2.2TB
 SATA
• Fewer wires (7) = thinner cable; Differential
signals (+ and – voltage)
• Up to one meter long cable (from 18”)
• Point to point connection – one device per
cable so no Master/Slave issue
• Performance is issue: 150 MBps vs. IDE at
133; SATA-II at 300 MBps burst mode SATA
III at 600MBps; SATA 3.2 up to 16 Gbps (aka
SATAe)
• Host Bus Adaptor – where SATA plugs in
20
 Data

Power
ESATA connector
 AHCI
• Advanced Host Controller Interface
• Windows Vista and later; enabled in
CMOS
• Works with SATA HBA (host bus adapter)
• Makes the drive show up in Computer
• Enables native command queuing, a disk
optimization feature
• Have to activate BEFORE installing OS
 SCSI
• Small Computer System Interface
• 1970’s by Shugart
• Uses a “chain” approach – device to device
to Host Adapter/Controller
• SCSI II and III can be internal (68-pin) or
external (50-pin); newest use 68-pin
external
• Apple (older) used 25-pin connector (SCSI-
1); looked like parallel port
Daisy Chain
 SCSI ID
• Use a number to identify devices on a link
• Can be any number (0-7 for SCSI-1); 0-15
for SCSI-2 or -3
• Host adapter usually set to 7; boot device
set to 0
 Termination
• Easy – both ends of the SCSI chain
• Most devices have termination built in; can
cause fits getting termination correct
• Do it wrong and device(s) won’t show up
 Configuring CMOS
• At first, we had to know, then type in, the
CHS values for a drive – lots of hassle
• Today, CMOS will get its information from
the drive automatically – even SATA
drives
 Drive Types
• Rather than Cylinders, Heads and Sectors
numbers, use Types
• We worked our way up to 46 different
types, Type 47 was “User Defined” and we
were back to CHS values
Type 47 (User) Screen
 RAID 0
• RAID 0 – Striping
– Two or more drives
– Writes alternate between drives for speed
– Both drives get same drive letter from system
– Fast but not safe; one failure and all fails

10
 RAID 1
• RAID 1 (Mirror)
– Two drives, one controller
– same drive letter
– writes are to both drives
– Safe, one drive can fail, but slow
• RAID 1 (Duplexing)
• Two drives, two controllers
• Writes are to both drives
• Same drive letter
• Faster and safer
 RAID 5
• RAID 5 – Striping with Parity
– Three or more drives
– Writes alternate Data, Data, Parity; Data,
Parity, Data; Parity, Data, Data
– Any one drive can fail and system can “heal”
itself

8
 JBOD
• Just A Bunch Of Disks
• Not RAID, but a way to use available
drives to create a large “logical” drive
(30+30+30 = 90 GB to OS)
• Another name for spanning
• One failure = total failure
 Hard or Soft RAID
• Use software, or motherboard for RAID 0,
1, 10 and 0+1
• Use hardware RAID for speed and 5
• Gamers love RAID 0 (now), when drive
crashes – not fun

6
 Physical Installation
• Power down the system
• Determine the max size disk system will
tolerate – may be in motherboard book
• Look at existing drive(s) for capacity
• Pick controller, make sure jumper is set,
plug in cable, add power connector
• Power on the system
 Physical Connection
• Here is the back of a disk drive:

Jumper
Block

40-pin Pin 1 Power

connector connection
4
Does it show up in CMOS?
 CMOS
• Even a new disk drive will show in CMOS
due to Autodetection. Thank you.
• Automatically sets drive geometry and
drive identification.
• Make sure you got the ribbon cable
correct, power correct and jumper correct
for a PATA drive; cables correct for SATA
PATA and SATA
 Boot Order
• Another CMOS setting, maybe its own
page, or part of a page

This could look like:

IDE-0
IDE-1, etc.
4
 Solid State Drives
• No moving parts !
• No extra heat
• No extra power drain – well not as much
• Solid state can be used in both laptop and
desktop systems
• Form factors are typically 1.8-inch, 2.5-
inch or 3.5-inch
 Solid State Drives
• SSDs can be PATA, SATA, eSATA, etc.
• SSDs that use SDRAM cache are volatile
so need battery
• SSDs can use multi-level cell (MLC) or
single-level cell (SLC) technology (better)
• You don’t want to defrag a SSD.
 Booting
• There is enough BIOS to boot from hard
disk drives
• There is enough BIOS to at least “see”
CD/DVD drives; on older systems there
might not be enough BIOS to boot from
CD
• New hard disk drives need to be
partitioned and formatted before use.
 Troubleshooting
• It takes: jumpers, data cable, power and
BIOS setup to work correctly
• Reverse the data cable: Pin 1 to 40 and
drive won’t show up in CMOS
• Drive might show with reduced size due to
CMOS limitations in older hardware