HARDDISC CONCEPTS.

HARDDISC
 A hard drive, also known hard disk or hard disk
drive, is a non-volatile data storage device.
 Technically, hard drives and hard disks are not
the same since hard drives consist of multiple
hard platters, the hard disk reader and writer
head, the hard drive motor, and the drive
electronics. On the other hand, a hard disk is the
storage medium itself.
HARDDISC
 A hard disk stores data through a magnetic
storage technique.
 This makes data stored on a hard disk very easy
to erase, revise and replace.
 Moreover, the magnetic recording patterns are
stored on a hard disk for a long time. As such,
the only way to definitely erase data that has
ever been stored on the disk's magnetic surface
is to physically destroy the disk.
HARDDISC

Spindle Read/write heads

Track

Boom

Plat ers
Physical Characteristics
 The hard drive is a simple, tightly sealed
aluminum box that has a filtered air-vent.
 Inside the box are electronics that direct the
read/write head or heads held aloft by a spindly
arm and controls the motor which rotates the
hard platters.
 The hard drive's driver electronics contains the
instructions for converting bytes into magnetic
domains when data is being recorded onto the
hard disks and for translating magnetic patterns
into bytes when data is requested by the CPU.
Features
 The hard disk has a magnetic material, usually a
cobalt-alloy, which is overlaid on a glass or
aluminum disk. The whole assembly is polished
until it attains mirror-like smoothness.
 Data stored on the hard drive's hard disks can be
accessed almost instantaneously. In the process
of recording data, the read/write head merely
hovers above the disk's magnetic surface.
 Moreover, in the process of data retrieval or
recording, the hard platter spins beneath the
read/write head with speeds of around 170 miles
per hour.
Features
 Because of the great rotation speed, data is
stored in significantly small regions of magnetic
space. This, coupled with the number of hard
disks used, makes a hard drive capable of
storing enormous amounts of data.
Data Storage Mechanism
 The magnetic surface of hard platters in a hard drive is
formatted into tracks (concentric circles) and sectors
(pie-like wedges on individual tracks) which can hold a
fixed number of bytes.
 When data needs to be recorded, the hard disk platters
rotate at great speeds and passes underneath the hard
drive read/write head.
 The magnetic head produces a magnetic field which
magnetizes the corresponding region where data is
supposed to be stored.
 During this process, the surface acquires a magnetic flux
or pattern representative of the information being stored.
What is a Hard Disk Partition?

Most operating systems allow users to divide a

hard disk into multiple partitions, in effect making
one physical hard disk into several smaller
logical hard disks.
Reasons to Use Hard Disk Partitions

 A user may decide to split a hard disk into

multiple partitions in order to organize his data
more effectively
 On Microsoft Windows machines, it is common
to store the OS and applications on one hard
disk partition and user data on another hard disk
partition.
 When a problem occurs with Microsoft Windows,
the OS partition can be completely formatted
and reinstalled without affecting the data
partition.
Continue…
 A user may decide to split a hard disk into
multiple partitions because smaller partitions
often have smaller cluster sizes. A cluster size is
the smallest chunk of data which a partition can
store.
 A large partition might have a cluster size of
16KB. This means that a file with one character
in it will occupy 16KB of space on the disk.
 In a smaller partition, that file might only require
4KB to store. This is a useful strategy if you are
storing a large number of small files.
Creating Hard Disk Partitions

 Most operating system use the `fdisk`

command to create hard disk partitions.
 Many operating systems also have
graphical tools which accomplish the same
task.
Hard Disk Partitions and File Systems

 You don't actually store data in hard disk

partitions.
 You store file systems in hard disk
partitions and then you store data in these
file systems.
The Partition Table

Partition information is stored in the

partition table, a reserved area at the
beginning of a hard disk.
Extended Partitions

 A standard partition table is only able to store information

about four partitions. At one time this meant that a hard
disk could have a maximum of four partitions.
 To work around this limitation, extended partitions were
created.
 An extended partition stores information about other
partitions. By using an extended partition, you can create
many more than four partitions on your hard disk.
 The four standard partitions are often called the primary
partitions.
 Partitions configured into an extended partition are often
referred to as logical partitions.
Partition Types

 When a partition is created, a special byte

of data is written to record what type of
partition it is.
 Because one hard disk may be shared by
multiple operating systems, operating
systems tend to agree on the meaning of
these values.
Partition Types

Partition table