Magnetic Disks

What are tracks and sectors?

Track Sector
is narrow
stores up to
recording band
that forms full 512 bytes
circle on disk of data

Formatting prepares disk for use and marks bad sectors as

unusable

p. 357 Fig. 7-5 Next

 Magnetic Disks
How do you compute a disk’s storage capacity?
 Multiply number of sides, number of tracks, number of sectors per
track, and number of bytes per sector
 For high-density disk: 2 sides × 80 tracks × 18 sectors per track × 512
bytes per sector = 1,474,560 bytes

Capacity: 1.44 MB
Characteristics of a
3.5-inch High-Density Sides: 2
Floppy Disk
Tracks: 80

Sectors per track: 18

Bytes per sector: 512

Sectors per disk: 2880

p. 359 Next
 Magnetic Disks
How does a hard disk work?

Step 3.
When software requests a
disk access, read/write
heads determine current
Step 2. or new location of data.
Small motor spins
platters while
computer is running.

Step 4.
Head actuator positions
read/write head arms over
Step 1. correct location on platters
Circuit board controls to read or write data.
movement of head actuator
and a small motor.

p. 361 Fig. 7-12 Next

 Magnetic Disks
platter
What is a cylinder? track
 Vertical section of sector
track through all
platters
 Single movement
of read/write head
arms accesses all
platters
read/write
in cylinder head

platter

sides

p. 362 Fig. 7-13 Next

cylinder
What is a File System?

✂ A file system can be thought of as the way your

computer goes about managing the files that gets
stored on your hard drive.

✂ (FAT,NTFS,HPFS,EXT2,EXT3 ETC)
A Short History Of The Windows FAT File Sy

✂ FAT is a proprietary computer file system

originally developed by Bill Gates and Marc
McDonald in 1976/1977. It became the standard file
system on many operating systems, including MS-
DOS and Windows (up to Windows Me)

✂ FAT12 is therefore most suitable for very small volumes, and is used on floppy disks and hard disk
partitions smaller than about 16 MB (the latter being rare today.)

✂ FAT16 is used for hard disk volumes ranging in size from 16 MB to 2,048 MB

✂ FAT32 can handle volume support (theoretically) drives up to 2 TB in size

✂ FAT and FAT32 are only used for dual-booting
between Windows XP and another operating
system
 
Overview and History of NTFS
✂ Before there was Windows NT, there was OS/2. OS/2
was a joint project of Microsoft and IBM in the early
1990s; the two companies were trying to create the next
big success in the world of graphical operating systems
✂ OS/2 had some significant technical accomplishments,
but suffered from marketing and support issues
✂ They borrowed many key concepts from OS/2's native
file system, HPFS, in creating NTFS.
✂ NTFS was designed to meet a number of specific
goals
✂ Reliability: One important characteristic of a "serious" file system is that it
must be able to recover from problems without data loss resulting. NTFS
implements specific features to allow important transactions to be completed as
an integral whole, to avoid data loss, and to improve fault tolerance

✂ Breaking Size Barriers: In the early 1990s, FAT was limited to the FAT16
version of the file system, which only allowed partitions up to 4 GiB in size.
NTFS was designed to allow very large partition sizes, in anticipation of growing
hard disk capacities, as well as the use of RAID arrays
Master File Table

✂ Master File Table or MFT is the place where information about every
file and directory on an NTFS volume is stored.

✂ The MFT is in essence a relational database table, containing various

attributes about different files. It acts as the "starting point" and
central management feature of an NTFS volume--sort of a "table of
contents" for the volume, if you will. It is somewhat analog to the
file allocation table in a FAT partition, but is much more than just a list
of used and available clusters
✂ Long File Names: NTFS allows file names to be up to 255 characters, instead of
the 8+3 character limitation of conventional FAT

✂ Networking: While networking is commonplace today, it was still in its

relatively early stages in the PC world when Windows NT was developed. At
around that time, businesses were just beginning to understand the importance
of networking, and Windows NT was given some facilities to enable networking
on a larger scale. (Some of the NT features that allow networking are not strictly
related to the file system, though some are.)
Basic Storage
✂ Basic storage consists of primary and extended
partitions. The first partition that is created on
a hard drive is called a primary partition and is
usually represented as drive C:.
✂ Disk Management Utility
Service Pack
✂ These are collection of service patches or patches
for software versions that fixes the existing
problem.
✂ Like bugs or provides enhancements to the product
that will appear in the next version of the product.
When the new product version is released.
✂ Service packs can either be downloaded or ordered
directly from the company.
Patch
✂ A patch is an actual piece of object code that is
inserted into (patched into) an executable program.

✂ Also called a service patch, a fix to a program bug.

✂ Patches typically are available as downloads over

the Internet