Computer System Maintenance

HARD DISK DRIVE

IPT 1 2018/19

Let love Lead

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]
 Lecture summary
• Assemble and Disassemble the HDD
• Partition and Format HDD
• Use of different HDD tools

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 Introduction
• Secondary Storage is usually:
 anything outside of “primary memory”
 storage that does not permit direct instruction execution or
data fetch by load/store instructions
 it’s large
 it’s cheap
 it’s non-volatile
 it’s slow

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 From Memory Hierarchy
•Memory is arranged as a hierarchy
CPU
registers, L1 cache
Each level acts as a cache
L2 cache of data from the level
below.

primary memory

disk storage (secondary memory) random access

tape or optical storage (tertiary memory)

3
sequential access

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 Magnetic Disks
• Bits of data (0’s and 1’s) are stored on circular magnetic
platters called disks.
• A disk rotates rapidly (& never stops).
• A disk head reads and writes bits of data as they pass under the
head.
• Often, several platters are organized into a disk pack (or disk
drive).

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 A Disk Drive

surfaces

Spindle Boom

Read/Write heads

Disk drive with 4 platters and 8 surfaces and 8 RW heads

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 Looking at a surface

tracks

sector

Surface of disk showing tracks and sectors

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 Organization of Disks
• Disk contains concentric tracks.
• Tracks are divided into sectors
• A sector is the smallest addressable unit in a disk.

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 Components of a Disk
Spindle
 The platters spin (say, 90rps). Tracks
Disk head
 The arm assembly is moved in or out
to position a head on a desired track.
Sector
Tracks under heads make a cylinder
(imaginary!).

 Only one head reads/writes Platters

Arm movement
at any one time.

Block size is a multiple Arm assembly

of sector size (which is often fixed).

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

Components of a Disk

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 Components of a Disk
• Hard disk drives usually have multiple disks, called platters, that are
stacked on top of each other and spin in unison, each with two sides on
which the drive stores data.
• Most drives have two or three platters, resulting in four or six sides, but
some PC hard disks have up to 12 platters and 24 sides with 24 heads to
read them (Seagate Barracuda 180).
• The identically aligned tracks on each side of every platter together make
up a cylinder4 a hard disk drive usually has one head per platter side, with
all the heads mounted on a common carrier device or rack.
• The heads move radially across the disk in unison, they can't move
independently because they are mounted on the same carrier or rack, called
an actuator.

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 Components of a Disk
• Originally, most hard disks spun at 3,600rpm approximately5,
now, however, most drives spin even faster.
• Although speeds can vary, modern drives typically spin the
platters at either 4,200rpm; 5,400rpm; 7,200rpm; 10,000rpm;
or 15,000rpm.

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

Components of a Disk

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 An Overview of the IDE Interface

• The interface used to connect hard disk and optical drives to a

modern PC is typically called IDE (Integrated Drive
Electronics).
• Although ATA (Advance Technology Attachment) is the
official name of the interface, IDE is a marketing term
originated by some of the drive manufacturers to describe the
drive/controller combination used in drives with the ATA
interface.

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 An Overview of the IDE Interface
• ATA was originally a 16-bit parallel interface, meaning that 16
bits are transmitted simultaneously down the interface cable.
• A newer interface, called Serial ATA, was officially introduced
in late 2000 and was adopted in desktop systems starting in
2003 and in laptops starting in late 2005.
• Serial ATA (SATA) sends 1 bit down the cable at a time,
enabling thinner and smaller cables to be used, as well as
providing higher performance due to the higher cycling speeds
it enables.
• SATA is a completely new and updated physical interface
design, while remaining compatible on the software level with
Parallel ATA.
Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]
 An Overview of the IDE Interface
• ATA refers to either just the parallel or both the parallel and
serial versions,
 whereas
Parallel ATA (PATA) refers specifically to the parallel
version
Serial ATA (SATA) refers specifically to the serial version.

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

An Overview of the IDE Interface

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 HDD Partitioning
• Creating a partition on a hard disk drive enables it to support
separate file systems, each in its own partition.
• Each file system can then use its own method to allocate file
space in logical units called clusters or allocation units.
• Every hard disk drive must have at least one partition on it and
can have up to four partitions, each of which can support the
same or different type file systems.

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 File System
• Three common file systems are used by PC operating systems
today:
 FAT (file allocation table). The standard file system supported
by DOS and Windows 9x/Me.
FAT partitions support filenames of 11 characters
maximum (8 characters + a 3-character extension) under
DOS, and 255 characters under Windows 9x (or later).
The standard FAT file system uses 12- or 16-bit numbers
to identify clusters, resulting in a maximum volume size of
2GB.

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 File System
• Three common file systems are used by PC operating systems
today:
Using FDISK, you can create only two physical FAT
partitions on a hard disk drive primary and extended but
you can subdivide the extended partition into as many as
25 logical volumes.
Alternative partitioning programs, such as Partition Magic,
can create up to four primary partitions or three primary
and one extended.

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 File System
• Three common file systems are used by PC operating systems
today:
 FAT32 (file allocation table, 32-bit).
An optional file system supported by Windows 95 OSR2
(OEM Service Release 2), Windows 98, Windows Me, and
Windows 2000/XP.
FAT32 uses 32-bit numbers to identify clusters, resulting
in a maximum single volume size of 2TB or 2,048GB.

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 File System
• Three common file systems are used by PC operating systems
today:
 NTFS (Windows NT File System).
The native file system for Windows NT/2000/XP that
supports filenames up to 256 characters long and partitions
up to (a theoretical) 16 exabytes.
NTFS also provides extended attributes and file system
security features that do not exist in the FAT file system.

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 File System
• Partitioning normally is accomplished by running the disk
partitioning program that comes with your operating system or
you can download free Disk Mangers.
• You usually should have as few partitions as possible, and
many people try to stick with only one or two at the most.

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 Disk Formatting
• During the high-level format, the operating system writes the
structures necessary for managing files and data on the disk.
 For example, FAT partitions have a Volume Boot Sector (VBS),
two copies of a file allocation table (FAT), and a root directory
on each formatted logical drive.
 These data structures enable the operating system to manage the
space on the disk, keep track of files, and even manage defective
areas so they do not cause problems.
 High-level formatting is not really a physical formatting of the
drive, but rather the creation of a table of contents for the disk.
 In low-level formatting, which is the real physical formatting
process, tracks and sectors are written on the disk.

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 Disk Formatting
• Hard Disk Partitioning and Formatting
 It can be done as follows
1. Using Disk manager program specific to HDD manufacturer
2. Using Operating System Disc.
3. Disk Partitioning and formatting Utilities.

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 Hard Disk Drive Form Factors
• Hard Disk Drive Form Factors

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

Hard Disk Drive Form Factors

HDD 2.5” and

1.8” are used in
Notebook and
Laptop
Computers and
3.5” in Desktop
Computers.

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 HDD Features
• Capacity
• Performance
• Reliability
 Capacity: How big a hard drive you can use depends somewhat
on the interface you choose.
 Performance: speed of the drive and is measured in two ways.
Transfer Rate: represents the average speed at which the
drive can actually read or write data.
Average Access Time: A measurement of a drive's average
access time is the sum of its average seek time plus
latency. The average access time is usually expressed in
milliseconds
Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]
 HDD Features
 Reliability:
Mean time Between Failures (MTBF) is used to measure the
reliability of the drive. MTBF is the failure rate for previous
drive models with the same components and calculate a
failure rate for a new drive based on the components used to
build the drive assembly.

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 Storage Device Troubleshooting
COMMON STORAGE DEVICE ISSUES
1. Troubleshooting Hard Drives

HD Symptom Problem Solution

1. Boot error •Drive is •Visually inspect
message: Drive damaged the drive and its
Not Ready- •Cable is not connections,
System halted connected or correct as
incorrectly needed
connected
Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]
 Storage Device Troubleshooting

2.Computer •Drive •Replace hard

will not boot disconnected, drive
damaged, not •Remind users and
recognized by technicians not to
BIOS move a machine
while in use

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 Storage Device Troubleshooting

3. Can’t read •Drive failure •Run chkdsk to try to

from or write •Virus attack recover info from bad
to the drive sectors
•Run virus check
software and remove
any virus found
4. Repeated •Physically damaged •Replace the hard drive
grinding drive, most likely due
noises to head crash

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

 Storage Device Troubleshooting

5. Data •System not being •Educate users on

corruption shut down properly how to properly shut
or utilities •Drive is in the down the system
not running process of failing •Run virus protection
properly •Virus software
6. Hard drive •Drive is too full or •Delete all unneeded
is slow fragmented files
•Hard drive controller •Defragment the drive
is too slow •Verify and replace the
hard drive cable if
necessary

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]

Computer System Maintenance

THANK YOU

Let Love Lead

Presenter: Thomas [Secondary Storage]