OPERATING SYSTEM

(BCS 401)

Lecture Notes

Unit-5
I/O Management and
Disk Scheduling
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OPERATING SYSTEMS UNIT-5

I/O Management and Disk Scheduling: I/O devices, and I/O subsystems, I/O
buffering, Disk storage and disk scheduling, RAID. File System: File concept, File
organization and access mechanism, File directories, and File sharing, File system
implementation issues, File system protection and security.

FILE CONCEPT
Files
 A file is a named collection of related information that is recorded on secondary
storage such as magnetic disks, magnetic tapes and optical disks.
 In general, a file is a sequence of bits, bytes, lines or records whose meaning is
defined by the files creator and user.
Attributes of a File
Following are some of the attributes of a file:
 Name. It is the only information which is in human-readable form.
 Identifier. The file is identified by a unique tag (number) within file system.
 Type. It is needed for systems that support different types of files.
 Location. Pointer to file location on device.
 Size. The current size of the file.
 Protection. This controls and assigns the power of reading, writing, executing.
 Time, date, and user identification. This is the data for protection, security,
and usage monitoring.
File Operations
The operating system must do to perform basic file operations given below.
 Creating a file: Two steps are necessary to create a file. First, space in the file
system must be found for the file. Second, an entry for the new file must be made
in the directory.
 Writing a file: To write a file, we make a system call specifying both the name
of the file and the information to be written to the file. Given the name of the
file, the system searches the directory to find the file's location. The system must
keep a write pointer to the location in the file where the next write is to take
place. The write pointer must be updated whenever a write occurs.
 Reading a file: To read from a file, we use a system call that specifies the name
of the file and where (in memory) the next block of the file should be put. Again,
the directory is searched for the associated entry, and the system needs to keep a
read pointer to the location in the file where the next read is to take place. Once
the read has taken place, the read pointer is updated.
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 Repositioning within a file: The directory is searched for the appropriate entry,
and the current-file-position pointer is repositioned to a given value.
Repositioning within a file need not involve any actual I/O. This file operation
is also known as file seek.
 Deleting a file: To delete a file, we search the directory for the named file.
Having found the associated directory entry, we release all file space, so that it
can be reused by other files, and erase the directory entry.
 Protection: Access-control information determines who can do reading,
writing, executing, and so on.
 Truncating a file: The user may want to erase the contents of a file but keep its
attributes. Rather than forcing the user to delete the file and then recreate it, this
function allows all attributes to remain unchanged—except for file length—but
lets the tile be reset to length zero and its file space released.

File Types
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File System Structure

A File Structure should be according to a required format that the operating system can
understand.
 A file has a certain defined structure according to its type.
 A text file is a sequence of characters organized into lines.
 A source file is a sequence of procedures and functions.
 An object file is a sequence of bytes organized into blocks that are
understandable by the machine.
 When operating system defines different file structures, it also contains the code
to support these file structure. Unix, MS-DOS support minimum number of file
structure.
Files can be structured in several ways in which three common structures are given in
this tutorial with their short description one by one.
File Structure 1
 Here, as you can see from the figure 1, the file is an unstructured sequence of
bytes.
 Therefore, the OS doesn't care about what is in the file, as all it sees are bytes.
File Structure 2
 Now, as you can see from the figure 2 that shows the second structure of a file,
where a file is a sequence of fixed-length records where each with some internal
structure.
 Central to the idea about a file being a sequence of records is the idea that read
operation returns a record and write operation just appends a record.
File Structure 3
 Now in the last structure of a file that you can see in the figure 3, a file basically
consists of a tree of records, not necessarily all the same length, each containing
a key field in a fixed position in the record. The tree is stored on the field, just to
allow the rapid searching for a specific key.

Fig.1 Fig.2 Fig.3

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File Access method

File access mechanism refers to the manner in which the records of a file may be
accessed. There are several ways to access files −
 Sequential access
 Direct/Random access
 Indexed sequential access
1. Sequential Access
 A sequential access is that in which the records are accessed in some sequence,
i.e., the information in the file is processed in order, one record after the other.
This access method is the most primitive one.
 The idea of Sequential access is based on the tape model which is a sequential
access device.
 The Sequential access method is best because most of the records in a file are to
be processed. For example, transaction files.
 Example: Compilers usually access files in this fashion.
In Brief:
 Data is accessed one record right after another is an order.
 Read command cause a pointer to be moved ahead by one.
 Write command allocate space for the record and move the pointer to the new
End of File.
 Such a method is reasonable for tape.
Advantages of sequential access
 It is simple to program and easy to design.
 Sequential file is best use if storage space.
Disadvantages of sequential access
 Sequential file is time consuming process.
 It has high data redundancy.
 Random searching is not possible.

2. Direct Access
 Sometimes it is not necessary to process every record in a file.
 It is not necessary to process all the records in the order in which they are present in the
memory. In all such cases, direct access is used.
 The disk is a direct access device which gives us the reliability to random access of any
file block.
 In the file, there is a collection of physical blocks and the records of that blocks.
 Example: Databases are often of this type since they allow query processing that
involves immediate access to large amounts of information. All reservation systems fall
into this category.
In brief:
 This method is useful for disks.
 The file is viewed as a numbered sequence of blocks or records.
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 There are no restrictions on which blocks are read/written, it can be done in any
order.
 User now says "read n" rather than "read next".
 "n" is a number relative to the beginning of file, not relative to an absolute
physical disk location.
Advantages:
 Direct access file helps in online transaction processing system (OLTP) like
online railway reservation system.
 In direct access file, sorting of the records are not required.
 It accesses the desired records immediately.
 It updates several files quickly.
 It has better control over record allocation.
Disadvantages:
 Direct access file does not provide backup facility.
 It is expensive.
 It has less storage space as compared to sequential file.

3. Indexed Sequential Access

 The index sequential access method is a modification of the direct access
method.
 Basically, it is kind of combination of both the sequential access as well as direct
access.
 The main idea of this method is to first access the file directly and then it
accesses sequentially.
 In this access method, it is necessary for maintaining an index.
 The index is nothing but a pointer to a block.
 The direct access of the index is made to access a record in a file.
 The information which is obtained from this access is used to access the file.
Sometimes the indexes are very big.
 So to maintain all these hierarchies of indexes are built in which one direct access
of an index leads to information of another index access.
 It is built on top of Sequential access.
 It uses an Index to control the pointer while accessing files.
Advantages:
 In indexed sequential access file, sequential file and random file access is
possible.
 It accesses the records very fast if the index table is properly organized.
 The records can be inserted in the middle of the file.
 It provides quick access for sequential and direct processing.
 It reduces the degree of the sequential search.
Disadvantages:
 Indexed sequential access file requires unique keys and periodic reorganization.
 Indexed sequential access file takes longer time to search the index for the data
access or retrieval.
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 It requires more storage space.
 It is expensive because it requires special software.
 It is less efficient in the use of storage space as compared to other file
organizations.

Swapping:
 Swapping is a mechanism in which a process can be swapped temporarily out of
main memory (or move) to secondary storage (disk) and make that memory
available to other processes.
 At some later time, the system swaps back the process from the secondary
storage to main memory.
 Though performance is usually affected by swapping process but it helps in
running multiple and big processes in parallel and that's the reason
 Swapping is also known as a technique for memory compaction.
 Swap space is a space on hard disk which is a substitute of physical memory.
 It is used as virtual memory which contains process memory image.
 Whenever our computer run short of physical memory it uses its virtual memory
and stores information in memory on disk.

File Space Allocation:

Files are allocated disk spaces by operating system. Operating systems deploy following
three main ways to allocate disk space to files.
 Contiguous Allocation
 Linked Allocation
 Indexed Allocation
1. Contiguous Allocation
 In this scheme, each file occupies a contiguous set of blocks on the disk. For
example, if a file requires n blocks and is given a block b as the starting location,
then the blocks assigned to the file will be: b, b+1, b+2,……b+n-1.
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 This means that given the starting block address and the length of the file (in
terms of blocks required), we can determine the blocks occupied by the file.
 The directory entry for a file with contiguous allocation contains
1. Address of starting block
2. Length of the allocated portion.
 The file ‘mail’ in the following figure starts from the block 19 with length = 6
blocks. Therefore, it occupies 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 blocks.

 Each file occupies a contiguous address space on disk.

 Assigned disk address is in linear order.
 Easy to implement.
 External fragmentation is a major issue with this type of allocation technique.
Advantages:
 Both the Sequential and Direct Accesses are supported by this. For direct access,
the address of the kth block of the file which starts at block b can easily be
obtained as (b+k).
 This is extremely fast since the number of seeks are minimal because of
contiguous allocation of file blocks.
Disadvantages:
 This method suffers from both internal and external fragmentation. This makes
it inefficient in terms of memory utilization.
 Increasing file size is difficult because it depends on the availability of
contiguous memory at a particular instance.

2. Linked Allocation
 In this scheme, each file is a linked list of disk blocks which need not be
contiguous.
 The disk blocks can be scattered anywhere on the disk.
 The directory entry contains a pointer to the starting and the ending file block.
 Each block contains a pointer to the next block occupied by the file.
 The file ‘jeep’ in following image shows how the blocks are randomly
distributed. The last block (25) contains -1 indicating a null pointer and does not
point to any other block.
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 Each file carries a list of links to disk blocks.

 Directory contains link / pointer to first block of a file.
 No external fragmentation
 Effectively used in sequential access file.
 Inefficient in case of direct access file.
Advantages:
1. File size does not have to be specified.
2. No external fragmentation.
Disadvantages:
1. It does sequential access efficiently and is not for direct access
2. Each block contains a pointer, wasting space
3. Blocks scatter everywhere and a large number of disk seeks may be necessary
4. Reliability: what if a pointer is lost or damaged?

3. Indexed Allocation
 In this scheme, a special block known as the Index block contains the pointers
to all the blocks occupied by a file. Each file has its own index block.
th th
 The i entry in the index block contains the disk address of the i file block.
 The directory entry contains the address of the index block as shown in the
image:

 Provides solutions to problems of contiguous and linked allocation.

 An index block is created having all pointers to files.
  Each file has its own index block which stores the addresses of disk space
occupied by the file.
 Directory contains the addresses of index blocks of files.
Advantages:
 This supports direct access to the blocks occupied by the file and therefore
provides fast access to the file blocks.
 It overcomes the problem of external fragmentation.
Disadvantages:
 The pointer overhead for indexed allocation is greater than linked allocation.
 For very small files, say files that expand only 2-3 blocks, the indexed allocation
would keep one entire block (index block) for the pointers which is inefficient in
terms of memory utilization. However, in linked allocation we lose the space of
only 1 pointer per block.

IO Subsystems

Input and output (I/O) devices permit us to communicate with the computer system. I/O
is the transfer of data between RAM and various I/O peripherals. By using Input devices
such as keyboards, mouse, card readers, scanners, voice recognition systems, and touch
screens we can enter data into the computer.

These devices directly not connected with the CPU. But there is an interface that
manages the data transfers between them. The system bus signals converted to and from
a format that is acceptable to the given device by this interface. Communication between
these external devices and processor is done via I/O registers.

The kernel provides many services related to I/O. Several services such as scheduling,
caching, spooling, device reservation, and error handling – are provided by the kernel,
and build on the hardware and device driver infrastructure.

Kernel I/O Services

1. Scheduling
It means to determine a good order in which to execute input/output requests called disk
scheduling.

Scheduling I/O requests can greatly improve overall efficiency. Priorities can also play a
vital role in request scheduling and can reduce the average waiting time for I/O to
complete.

By this device access, permissions will be fair to all jobs. When an application issues a
blocking I/O system call, the request is placed on the job queue for that device. The
order of the queue rearranges by the Kernel I/O scheduler to improve the overall system
efficiency.

2. Caching
It involves keeping a copy of data in a faster access location than where the data is
normally stored.
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For example, when you request a file by looking at a Web page are stored on your hard
disk in a cache subdirectory under the directory for your browser. When you get back to
a page you have recently visited, the browser can get those files from the cache rather
than the original server, saving you time and saving the network the burden of additional
traffic.

There is a difference between cache and buffer is cache is a duplicate copy of some
other data stored elsewhere whereas buffer stores copy of an existing data item.

3. Buffering
Buffer is a memory area maintains by Kernel I/O Subsystem that stores data while they
are transferred between two devices or between a device with an application.

Buffering is done for three reasons.

1. One reason is to adapt to devices that have different data transfer sizes.
2. A second use of buffering is to support copy semantics for an application I/O. An
application wants to write data on disk which is stored in its buffer, it is called
“copy semantic”. it calls the write() system call, providing a pointer to the buffer
and the integer specify the number of bytes to write.
3. A third one is to cope with the speed mismatch between the producer and
consumer of the data stream.

4. Spooling
A spool is a type of buffer that holds output for a device. It is the process in which jobs
from the cards are read directly onto the disk and the location of that card in the disk is
recorded in a table by the operating system. When that job is required for execution, it is
read from the disk.

For example, several applications may wish to print their output concurrently, so
spooling solves this problem by maintaining a queue for the output. A printer does not
accept interleaved data. The output of all application is spooled in a separate disk file.
When an application finishes printing then the spooling system queues the
corresponding spool file for output to the printer.

5. Device Reservation
It provides exclusive device access. Allocation of devices when required by the
processes and that device when it is no longer needed. It prevents deadlock. Many
operating systems provide features that enable processes to coordinate and give
exclusive access to them.

6. Error Handling
An operating system that uses protected memory that can guard against many kinds of
hardware and application errors. Devices and I/O transfers may fail in some manner,
either for transient reasons, as when a network becomes overloaded or for permanent
reasons, as when a disk controller becomes defective.
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Directory Structure
 A directory is a container that is used to contain folders and file.
 It organizes files and folders into a hierarchical manner.

1. Single-level directory –
 Single level directory is simplest directory structure.
 In it all files are contained in same directory which make it easy to support and
understand.
 A single level directory has a significant limitation, however, when the number
of files increases or when the system has more than one user.
 Since all the files are in the same directory, they must have the unique name. if
two users call their dataset test, then the unique name rule violated.

Advantages:
 Since it is a single directory, so its implementation is very easy.
 If files are smaller in size, searching will faster.
 The operations like file creation, searching, deletion, updating are very easy in
such a directory structure.
Disadvantages:
 There may chance of name collision because two files cannot have the same
name.
 Searching will become time taking if directory will large.
 In this cannot group the same type of files together.

2. Two-level directory –
 As, a single level directory often leads to confusion of files names among
different users hence the solution to this problem is to create a separate directory
for each user.
 In the two-level directory structure, each user has their own user files directory
(UFD).
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 The UFDs has similar structures, but each lists only the files of a single user.
system’s master file directory (MFD) is searches whenever a new user id=s
logged in.
 The MFD is indexed by username or account number, and each entry points to
the UFD for that user.

Advantages:
 We can give full path like /User-name/directory-name/.
 Different users can have same directory as well as file name.
 Searching of files become more easy due to path name and user-grouping.
Disadvantages:
 A user is not allowed to share files with other users.
 Still it not very scalable, two files of the same type cannot be grouped together
in the same user.

3. Tree-structured directory –
 Once we have seen a two-level directory as a tree of height 2, the natural
generalization is to extend the directory structure to a tree of arbitrary height.

 This generalization allows the user to create their own subdirectories and to
organize on their files accordingly.
 A tree structure is the most common directory structure. The tree has a root
directory, and every file in the system have a unique path.
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Advantages:
 Very generalize, since full path name can be given.
 Very scalable, the probability of name collision is less.
 Searching becomes very easy, we can use both absolute path as well as relative.
Disadvantages:
 Every file does not fit into the hierarchical model; files may be saved into
multiple directories.
 We cannot share files.
 It is inefficient, because accessing a file may go under multiple directories.

Disk Organization
A physical structure of disk is a memory storage device which looks like this:

 Hard disk consists of a number of platters

 The platters rotate at a very high speed (5400 RPM to 10,000 RPM)
 Disk (read/write) heads move over the platter surface to read and write
(magnetize) data bits
 The disk head can read or write data only when the desired disk surface area is
under the disk head.
 Read-Write(R-W) head moves over the rotating hard disk.
 It is this Read-Write head that performs all the read and write operations on the
disk and hence, position of the R-W head is a major concern.
 To perform a read or write operation on a memory location, we need to place the
R-W head over that position. Some important terms must be noted here:
1. Seek time – The time taken by the R-W head to reach the desired track from
it’s current position.
2. Rotational latency – Time taken by the sector to come under the R-W head.
3. Data transfer time – Time taken to transfer the required amount of data. It
depends upon the rotational speed.
4. Controller time – The processing time taken by the controller.
5. Average Access time – seek time + Average Rotational latency + data
transfer time + controller time.
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Logical Disk Structure:

 The disk is divided into tracks.
 Each track is further divided into sectors.
 The point to be noted here is that outer tracks are bigger in size than the inner
tracks but they contain the same number of sectors and have equal storage
capacity.
 This is because the storage density is high in sectors of the inner tracks whereas
the bits are sparsely arranged in sectors of the outer tracks.
 Some space of every sector is used for formatting.
 So, the actual capacity of a sector is less than the given capacity.

Basically, hard disk can be divided in the logical structure in the following five logical
terms:
 MBR (Master Boot Record)
 DBR (DOS Boot Record)
 FAT (File Allocation Tables)
 Root Directory
 Data Area

1. The Master Boot Record (or MBR)
 At the beginning of the hard drive is the MBR. When your computer starts using
your hard drive, this is where it looks first.
 The MBR itself has a specific organization. The size of the MBR is 512 bytes.
 The boot loader is the first 446 bytes of the MBR. This section contains
executable code, where programs are housed.
 The partition tables are 4 slots of 16 bytes each, containing the description of a
partition (primary or extended) on the disk.

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Here is how to describe a partition:

 State of the partition (inactive partition bootable) - (1 byte)
 Custom heads at the beginning of the partition - (1 byte)
 Cylinder sector and the beginning of the partition - (2 bytes)
 Type of partition (file system, eg, 32 fat, ext2 etc ...) - (1 bytes)
 Head of the end of the partition (1 byte)
 Cylinder sector and the end of the score - (2 bytes)
 Number of sectors between the MBR and the first sector of the partition - (4
bytes)
 Number of sector of the partition - (4 bytes)
 The Magic Number is two bytes used to determine if the hard disk has a
bootloader or not. If it does, the magic number should be equal in value to
hexadecimal 55AA.

2. DOS Boot Record (DBR) / DOS Boot Sector

 After the partition table, the DOS Boot Record (DBR) or sometimes called DOS
Boot Sector is the second most important information on your hard drive.
 The DOS Boot Record (DBR) for the first partition on a hard disk is usually
found at Absolute Sector 63 (the 64th sector on the disk drive) or in CHS form
we can say C–H–S = 0–1–1 for most drives.
 The sector on which DBR resides becomes logical sector 1 of that particular
partition for the DOS. The sector number used by DOS starts from the physical
sector on which DBR is located.
First logical sector of each DOS partition will contain a DOS Boot Record (DBR)
or DOS Boot Sector. The job of the DBR is to load the operating system from
the hard disk drive into the main memory of computer and give the systems
control to the loaded program.

3. FAT (File Allocation Tables)

 Following DBR are the File Allocation Tables.
 The FAT has been modified several times to accommodate expanding needs.
 FAT keeps a map of the complete surface of the disk drive such that, which area
is free, which area is bad, which area is taken up by which file etc.
 When some data stored on the disk surface is to be accessed, the DOS consults
the FAT to find out the areas of the hard disk surface that contains the data.
 The FAT does not keep track of each and every sector on the disk surface instead
it manages the disk area in a group of sectors called “cluster” or “allocation unit”
(See the Cluster Discussed before, in the same chapter).
 A cluster is the smallest unit of hard disk drive space that DOS allocates to a file,
it consists of one or more sectors depending on the drive size.
 The cluster size is decided and fixed by the DOS FORMAT program during the
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high level formatting of the hard disk drive. (See the “size of clusters” discussion,
given before)
 Actually, the FAT is an index of the clusters of the entire volume.
 The FAT has one entry for each cluster. The first two entries in a FAT contain
information about the FAT.
 The third and subsequent entries in the FAT are assigned to clusters of disk
space, starting with the first cluster available for use by files

4. Root Directory or Directory table

 Following the last FAT is the Root Directory.
 The root directory is like a table of contents for the information stored on the
hard disk drive.
 The location of the Root Directory can easily be established by adding up the
values from boot record, as it is positioned following the FATs.
 The directory area keeps the information about the file name, date and time of
the file creation, file attribute, file size and starting cluster of the particular file.
 Each directory entry describing this information about a file is a 32 byte
information.
 The root directory contains information about the files and directories branching
from the root directory.
 All further directories are themselves stored as files, in the same format as the
root directory.
 Previously the root directory used to be fixed in size and located at a fixed
position on disk but now it is free to grow as necessary as it is now treated as a
file.

5. Data Area (or Files Area)

 Following the Root Directory, the Data Area (or Files Area) starts. Rather we
can say that the remainder of the volume after Root Directory is the Data Area.
 The data area contains the actual data stored on the disk surface.
 DOS uses cluster number 2 for the first sector of the data area therefore we
should keep it in mind while performing various calculations that the cluster
number should start from 2.

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Types of Disk Scheduling

1. FCFS disk scheduling algorithm-

It stands for 'first-come-first-serve'. As the name suggests, the request which comes
first will be processed first and so on. The requests coming to the disk are arranged in
a proper sequence as they arrive. Since every request is processed in this algorithm, so
there is no chance of 'starvation'.
Example: Suppose a disk having 200 tracks (0-199). The request sequence (82, 170,
43, 140, 24, 16, 190) of disk are shown as in the given figure and the head start is at
request 50

Explanation: In the above image, we can see the head starts at position 50 and moves
to request 82. After serving them the disk arm moves towards the second request that
is 170 and then to the request 43 and so on. In this algorithm,, the disk arm will serve
the requests in arriving order. In this way, all the requests are served in arriving order
until the process executes.
"Seek time" will be calculated by adding the head movement differences of all the
requests:
Seek time= "(82-50) + (170-82) + (170-43) + (140-43) + (140-24) + (24-16) + (190-
16) = 642
 Advantages:
1. Implementation is easy.
2. No chance of starvation.
 Disadvantages:
1. 'Seek time' increases.
2. Not so efficient.
 Operating Systems IO Management & Disk
Unit 5 Scheduling

2. SSTF disk scheduling algorithm-

It stands for 'Shortest seek time first'. As the name suggests, it searches for the request
having the least 'seek time' and executes them first. This algorithm has less 'seek time'
as compared to FCFS Algorithm.
Example: Suppose a disk having 200 tracks (0-199). The request sequence (82, 170,
43, 140, 24, 16, 190) are shown in the given figure and the head position is at 50.

Explanation: The disk arm searches for the request which will have the least
difference in head movement. So, the least difference is (50-43). Here the difference is
not about the shortest value but it is about the shortest time the head will take to reach
the nearest next request. So, after 43, the head will be nearest to 24, and from here the
head will be nearest to the request 16, After 16, the nearest request is 82, so the disk
arm will move to serve request 82 and so on.
Hence, Calculation of Seek Time = (50-43) + (43-24) + (24-16) + (82-16) + (140-82)
+ (170-140) + (190-170) = 208
 Advantages:
1. In this algorithm, disk response time is less.
2. More efficient than FCFS.
 Disadvantages:
1. Less speed of algorithm execution.
2. Starvation can be seen.

3. SCAN disk scheduling algorithm:

In this algorithm, the head starts to scan all the requests in a direction and reaches the
end of the disk. After that, it reverses its direction and starts to scan again the requests
in its path and serves them. Due to this feature, this algorithm is also known as the
"Elevator Algorithm".
Example: Suppose a disk having 200 tracks (0-199). The request sequence (82, 170,
43, 140, 24, 16, 190) are shown in the given figure and the head position is at 50. The
'disk arm' will first move to the larger values.
 Operating Systems IO Management & Disk
Unit 5 Scheduling

Explanation: In the above image, we can see that the disk arm starts from position 50
and goes in a single direction until it reaches the end of the disk i.e.- request position
199. After that, it reverses and starts servicing in the opposite direction until reached
the other end of the disk. This process keeps going on until the process is executed.
Hence, Calculation of 'Seek Time' will be like: (199-50) + (199-16) =332
 Advantages:
1. Implementation is easy.
2. Requests do not have to wait in a queue.
 Disadvantage:
1. The head keeps going on to the end even if there are no requests in that
direction.
4. C-SCAN disk scheduling algorithm:
It stands for "Circular-Scan". This algorithm is almost the same as the Scan disk
algorithm but one thing that makes it different is that 'after reaching the one end and
reversing the head direction, it starts to come back. The disk arm moves toward the
end of the disk and serves the requests coming into its path. After reaching the end of
the disk it reverses its direction and again starts to move to the other end of the disk
but while going back it does not serve any requests.
Example: Suppose a disk having 200 tracks (0-199). The request sequence (82, 170,
43, 140, 24, 16, 190) are shown in the given figure and the head position is at 50.
Operating Systems IO Management & Disk
Unit 5 Scheduling
Explanation: In the above figure, the disk arm starts from position 50 and reached the
end (199), and serves all the requests in the path. Then it reverses the direction and
moves to the other end of the disk i.e.- 0 without serving any task in the path. After
reaching 0, it will again go move towards the largest remaining value which is 43. So,
the head will start from 0 and moves to request 43 serving all the requests coming in
the path. And this process keeps going.
Hence, Seek Time will be = (199-50) + (199-0) + (43-0) = 391
 Advantages:
1. The waiting time is uniformly distributed among the requests.
2. Response time is good in it.
 Disadvantages:
1. The time taken by the disk arm to locate a spot is increased here.
2. The head keeps going to the end of the disk.

5. LOOK the disk scheduling algorithm:

In this algorithm, the disk arm moves to the 'last request' present and services them.
After reaching the last requests, it reverses its direction and again comes back to the
starting point. It does not go to the end of the disk, inspite, it goes to the end of
requests.
Example a disk having 200 tracks (0-199). The request sequence (82, 170, 43, 140,
24, 16, 190) are shown in the given figure and the head position is at 50.

Explanation: The disk arm is starting from 50 and starts to serve requests in one
direction only but inspite of going to the end of the disk, it goes to the end of requests
i.e.-190. Then comes back to the last request of other ends of the disk and serves them.
And again starts from here and serves till the last request of the first side. Hence, Seek
time = (190-50) + (190-16) = 314
 Advantages:
1. Starvation does not occur.
2. Since the head does not go to the end of the disk, the time is not wasted
here.
 Operating Systems IO Management & Disk
Unit 5 Scheduling
 Disadvantage:
1. The arm has to be conscious to find the last request.

6. C-LOOK disk scheduling algorithm:

The C-Look algorithm is almost the same as the Look algorithm. The only difference
is that after reaching the end requests, it reverses the direction of the head and starts
moving to the initial position. But in moving back, it does not serve any requests.
Example: Suppose a disk having 200 tracks (0-199). The request sequence (82, 170,
43, 140, 24, 16, 190) are shown in the given figure and the head position is at 50.

Explanation: The disk arm is starting from 50 and starts to serve requests in one
direction only but in spite of going to the end of the disk, it goes to the end of requests
i.e.-190. Then comes back to the last request of other ends of a disk without serving
them. And again starts from the other end of the disk and serves requests of its path.
Hence, Seek Time = (190-50) + (190-16) + (43-16) = 341
 Advantages:
1. The waiting time is decreased.
2. If there are no requests till the end, it reverses the head direction
immediately.
3. Starvation does not occur.
4. The time taken by the disk arm to find the desired spot is less.
 Disadvantage:
1. The arm has to be conscious about finding the last request.





 Operating Systems IO Management & Disk
Unit 5 Scheduling

Raid Structure of Disk
 RAID, or “Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks” is a technique which makes
use of a combination of multiple disks instead of using a single disk for increased
performance, data redundancy or both.
Why data redundancy?
 Data redundancy, although taking up extra space, adds to disk reliability.
 This means, in case of disk failure, if the same data is also backed up onto
another disk, we can retrieve the data and go on with the operation.
 On the other hand, if the data is spread across just multiple disks without the
RAID technique, the loss of a single disk can affect the entire data.

Standard RAID levels

RAID 0: This configuration has striping, but no redundancy of data. It offers the
bestperformance, but no fault tolerance.

RAID 1: Also known as disk mirroring, this configuration consists of at least two
drives that duplicate the storage of data. There is no striping. Read performance is
improved since either disk can be read at the same time. Write performance is the
same as for single disk storage.
Operating Systems IO Management & Disk
Unit 5 Scheduling
RAID 2: (Bit-Level Stripping with Hamming-Code Parity) this configuration uses
bit-level striping across disks, with some disks storing error checking and correcting
(ECC) information. It has no advantage over RAID 3 and is nolonger used.

RAID 3: (Byte-Level Stripping with Dedicated Parity) this technique uses striping
and dedicates one drive to storing parity information. The embedded ECC information
is used to detect errors. Data recovery is accomplished by calculating the exclusive OR
(XOR) of the information recorded on the other drives. Since an I/O operation
addresses all the drives at the same time, RAID 3 cannot overlap I/O. For this reason,
RAID 3 is best for single-user systems with longrecord applications.

RAID 4: (Block-Level Stripping with Dedicated Parity) this level uses large
stripes, which means you can read records from any single drive. This allows you to
use overlapped I/O for read operations. Since all write operations have to update the
parity drive, no I/O overlapping is possible.
Operating Systems IO Management & Disk
Unit 5 Scheduling

RAID 5: This level is based on block-level striping with parity. The parity
information is striped across each drive, allowing the array to function even if one drive
were to fail. The array's architecture allows read and write operations to span multiple
drives. This results in performance that is usually better than that of a single drive, but
not as high as that of a RAID 0 array. RAID 5 requires at least three disks, but it is
often recommended to use at least five disks for performance reasons.

RAID 6: This technique is similar to RAID 5, but includes a double parity scheme
that is distributed across the drives in the array. The use of additional parity allows the
arrayto continue to function even if two disks fail simultaneously. However, this extra
protection comes at a cost. RAID 6 arrays have a higher cost per gigabyte (GB) and
often have slower write performance than RAID 5 arrays.
Operating Systems IO Management & Disk
Unit 5 Scheduling

File System Implementation Issues

 Management of disc space: To prevent space wastage and to guarantee that
files can always be stored in contiguous blocks, file systems must manage disc
space effectively. Free space management, fragmentation prevention, and
garbage collection are methods for managing disc space.
 Checking for consistency and repairing errors: The consistency and error-
free operation of files and directories must be guaranteed by file systems.
Journaling, check summing, and redundancy are methods for consistency
checking and error recovery. File systems may need to perform recovery
operations if errors happen in order to restore lost or damaged data.
 Locking files and managing concurrency: To prevent conflicts and guarantee
data integrity, file systems must control how many processes or users can access
a file at once. File locking, semaphore, and other concurrency-controlling
methods are available.
 Performance optimization: File systems need to optimize performance by
reducing file access times, increasing throughput, and minimizing system
overhead. Caching, buffering, prefetching, and parallel processing are methods
for improving performance.

File System Security and Protection

An operating system offers a technique to avoid tampering

with logical and physical resources. Two of these are security and protection. Although
these terms are frequently used interchangeably, protection and security are different.
Protection entails preventing unauthorized users from interfering with the user's
applications and data. In contrast, security entails protecting the user's programs and
data against disruption by outside parties like unauthorized users of other systems.

 Security

A system's security revolves around its external environment and needs a suitable
protective system. Security systems safeguard computer resources against unauthorized
access, manipulation, and inconsistency. In this context, resources might be stored
information in the system, CPU, memory, drives, etc.

The system's security emphasizes the system's authentication process to secure the
physical resources and the integrity of the information contained in the system. Security
is a method that protects the user's programs and data against interference produced by
an entity or person outside the system. For instance, multiple workers of an organization
can access data. Still, it cannot be accessed by a user who does not exist in that
organization or a user who works in another organization. An organization's primary
responsibility is to implement security measures to prevent unauthorized access to its
data by external users.
Operating Systems IO Management & Disk
Unit 5 Scheduling

 Protection

Protection is a component of security that regulates system access by restricting the

types of file access permitted to users. A system's security must ensure the permission of
processes or users. As a result, authorized users or processes can access the CPU,
memory regions, and other resources. The protection technique should include a way of
identifying and enforcing the controls that will be enforced.

The protection was thought to be a useful feature for a multiprogramming OS. It

prevents unreliable users from sharing a logical and physical namespace, including a
directory of files and memory. Protection is required to intercept a user's malicious,
purposeful breach of an access constraint. However, it is vital to ensure that each active
program component in a system only uses system resources in the ways defined in
policies. It protects the user's data and apps from interception by other system users.

Key differences between the Security and Protection in Operating System

1. Security is a technique used in operating systems to address threats from outside

the system to maintain the system's proper functioning. On the other hand,
protection is a technique used in operating systems to control hazards and
maintain the system's proper functioning.
2. The security technique specifies whether or not a specific user is allowed to
access the system. In contrast, the protection technique outlines which users are
permitted to access a certain resource.
3. Security techniques include adding, deleting users, determining whether or not a
certain user is authorized, employing anti-malware software, etc. On the other
hand, protection includes techniques like modifying a resource's protection
information and determining whether a user may access it.
4. Security is a wide phrase that handles more complicated queries. On the other
hand, the protection comes with security and covers less complex queries.
5. Security techniques mainly focus on external threats to the system. On the other
hand, the protection techniques mainly focus on internal threats to the system.
6. Security offers a technique for protecting system and user resources from
unauthorized access. On the other hand, the protection controls access to
processes, programs, and user resources.