William Stallings

Computer Organization
and Architecture
8th Edition

Chapter 6
External Memory
Types of External Memory
Magnetic Disk
RAID
Removable
Optical
CD-ROM
CD-Recordable (CD-R)
CD-R/W
DVD
Magnetic Tape
Magnetic Disk
Disk substrate coated with magnetizable
material (iron oxiderust)
Substrate used to be aluminium
Now glass
Improved surface uniformity
Increases reliability
Reduction in surface defects
Reduced read/write errors
Lower flight heights (See later)
Better stiffness
Better shock/damage resistance
Read and Write Mechanisms
Recording & retrieval via conductive coil called a head
May be single read/write head or separate ones
During read/write, head is stationary, platter rotates
Write
Current through coil produces magnetic field
Pulses sent to head
Magnetic pattern recorded on surface below
Read (traditional)
Magnetic field moving relative to coil produces current
Coil is the same for read and write
Read (contemporary)
Separate read head, close to write head
Partially shielded magneto resistive (MR) sensor
Electrical resistance depends on direction of magnetic field
High frequency operation
Higher storage density and speed
Inductive Write MR Read
Data Organization and Formatting
Concentric rings or tracks
Gaps between tracks
Reduce gap to increase capacity
Same number of bits per track (variable
packing density)
Constant angular velocity
Tracks divided into sectors
Minimum block size is one sector
May have more than one sector per block
Disk Data Layout
Disk Velocity
Bit near centre of rotating disk passes fixed point
slower than bit on outside of disk
Increase spacing between bits in different tracks
Rotate disk at constant angular velocity (CAV)
Gives pie shaped sectors and concentric tracks
Individual tracks and sectors addressable
Move head to given track and wait for given sector
Waste of space on outer tracks
Lower data density
Can use zones to increase capacity
Each zone has fixed bits per track
More complex circuitry
Disk Layout Methods Diagram
Finding Sectors
Must be able to identify start of track and
sector
Format disk
Additional information not available to user
Marks tracks and sectors
Winchester Disk Format
Seagate ST506
Characteristics
Fixed (rare) or movable head
Removable or fixed
Single or double (usually) sided
Single or multiple platter
Head mechanism
Contact (Floppy)
Fixed gap
Flying (Winchester)
Fixed/Movable Head Disk
Fixed head
One read write head per track
Heads mounted on fixed ridged arm
Movable head
One read write head per side
Mounted on a movable arm
Removable or Not
Removable disk
Can be removed from drive and replaced with
another disk
Provides unlimited storage capacity
Easy data transfer between systems
Nonremovable disk
Permanently mounted in the drive
Multiple Platter
One head per side
Heads are joined and aligned
Aligned tracks on each platter form
cylinders
Data is striped by cylinder
reduces head movement
Increases speed (transfer rate)
Multiple Platters
Tracks and Cylinders
Floppy Disk
8, 5.25, 3.5
Small capacity
Up to 1.44Mbyte (2.88M never popular)
Slow
Universal
Cheap
Obsolete?
Winchester Hard Disk (1)
Developed by IBM in Winchester (USA)
Sealed unit
One or more platters (disks)
Heads fly on boundary layer of air as disk
spins
Very small head to disk gap
Getting more robust
Winchester Hard Disk (2)
Universal
Cheap
Fastest external storage
Getting larger all the time
250 Gigabyte now easily available
Speed
Seek time
Moving head to correct track
(Rotational) latency
Waiting for data to rotate under head
Access time = Seek + Latency
Transfer rate
Timing of Disk I/O Transfer
RAID
Redundant Array of Independent Disks
Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
6 levels in common use
Not a hierarchy
Set of physical disks viewed as single
logical drive by O/S
Data distributed across physical drives
Can use redundant capacity to store
parity information
RAID 0
No redundancy
Data striped across all disks
Round Robin striping
Increase speed
Multiple data requests probably not on same
disk
Disks seek in parallel
A set of data is likely to be striped across
multiple disks
Data Mapping For RAID 0
RAID 1
Mirrored Disks
Data is striped across disks
2 copies of each stripe on separate disks
Read from either
Write to both
Recovery is simple
Swap faulty disk & re-mirror
No down time
Expensive
RAID 0, 1, 2
RAID 4
Each disk operates independently
Good for high I/O request rate
Large stripes
Bit by bit parity calculated across stripes
on each disk
Parity stored on parity disk
RAID 3 & 4
RAID 5
Like RAID 4
Parity striped across all disks
Round robin allocation for parity stripe
Avoids RAID 4 bottleneck at parity disk
Commonly used in network servers

N.B. DOES NOT MEAN 5 DISKS!!!!!

RAID 6
Two parity calculations
Stored in separate blocks on different
disks
User requirement of N disks needs N+2
High data availability
Three disks need to fail for data loss
Significant write penalty
RAID 5 & 6
RAID SUMMARY
RAID SUMMARY
Optical Storage CD-ROM
Originally for audio
650Mbytes giving over 70 minutes audio
Polycarbonate coated with highly
reflective coat, usually aluminium
Data stored as pits
Read by reflecting laser
Constant packing density
Constant linear velocity ( CLV )
CD Operation
CD-ROM Drive Speeds
Audio is single speed
Constant linear velocity
1.2 ms-1
Track (spiral) is 5.27km long
Gives 4391 seconds = 73.2 minutes
Other speeds are quoted as multiples
e.g. 24x
Quoted figure is maximum drive can
achieve
CD-ROM Format

Mode 0=blank data field

Mode 1=2048 byte data+error correction
Mode 2=2336 byte data
Random Access on CD-ROM
Difficult
Move head to rough position
Set correct speed
Read address
Adjust to required location
(Yawn!)
CD-ROM for & against
Large capacity (?)
Easy to mass produce
Removable
Robust

Expensive for small runs

Slow
Read only
Other Optical Storage
CD-Recordable (CD-R)
WORM
Now affordable
Compatible with CD-ROM drives
CD-RW
Erasable
Getting cheaper
Mostly CD-ROM drive compatible
Phase change
Material has two different reflectivities in different
phase states
DVD - whats in a name?
Digital Video Disk
Used to indicate a player for movies
Only plays video disks
Digital Versatile Disk
Used to indicate a computer drive
Will read computer disks and play video disks
Dogs Veritable Dinner
Officially - nothing!!!
DVD - technology
Multi-layer
Very high capacity (4.7G per layer)
Full length movie on single disk
Using MPEG compression
Finally standardized (honest!)
Movies carry regional coding
Players only play correct region films
Can be fixed
DVD Writable
Lots of trouble with standards
First generation DVD drives may not read
first generation DVD-W disks
First generation DVD drives may not read
CD-RW disks
Wait for it to settle down before buying!
CD and DVD
High Definition Optical Disks
Designed for high definition videos
Much higher capacity than DVD
Shorter wavelength laser
Blue-violet range
Smaller pits
HD-DVD
15GB single side single layer
Blue-ray
Data layer closer to laser
Tighter focus, less distortion, smaller pits
25GB on single layer
Available read only (BD-ROM), Recordable
once (BR-R) and re-recordable (BR-RE)
Optical Memory Characteristics
Magnetic Tape
Serial access
Slow
Very cheap
Backup and archive
Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Tape Drives
Developed late 1990s
Open source alternative to proprietary tape
systems
Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Tape Drives
LTO-1 LTO-2 LTO-3 LTO-4 LTO-5 LTO-6

Release date 2000 2003 2005 2007 TBA TBA

Compressed capacity 200 GB 400 GB 800 GB 1600 GB 3.2 TB 6.4 TB

Compressed transfer 40 80 160 240 360 540

rate (MB/s)

Linear density 4880 7398 9638 13300

(bits/mm)

Tape tracks 384 512 704 896

Tape length 609 m 609 m 680 m 820 m

Tape width (cm) 1.27 1.27 1.27 1.27

Write elements 8 8 16 16
Internet Resources
Optical Storage Technology Association
Good source of information about optical
storage technology and vendors
Extensive list of relevant links
DLTtape
Good collection of technical information and
links to vendors
Search on RAID