NETTUR TECHNICAL TRAINING FOUNDATION

DIPLOMA IN COMPUTER ENGINEERING–CP08

PC HARDWARE

SUBJECT CODE: CP 08 04 02

PREPARED BY: Mr.Loganathan B(NEC)

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 Unit-5
Hard Disk Drive & Controllers

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Unit 5.0: Hard Disk Drive and Controllers 7hrs

5.1 Hard Disk Drives: Costruction of Hard Drive with Disk

Platters,The Spindle Motors,Storage
Media,Read/Write Heads,Head Actuators 1hr
5.2 Interface: T506/412 Interfaces, ESDI, IDE, SCSI Interface,
System Bus Interface 2hrs

5.3 Data Organization: Disk Capacities 1hr

5.4 Hard Disk Performance 1hr

5.5 CD – ROMs
5.5.1 Technology of the CD and CD – ROM
5.5.2 Compact Disc Media, CD- ROM Drive Operation 2hrs
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5.1 Hard Disk Drives

 This hard disk and floppy disk are types of secondary storage
also known as permanent storage used in PC’s where the RAM
is used as ‘primary storage’ also known as temporary storage.

 The first hard disk was found or showed up in the year 1950’s on
main frame computer. They are originally called fixed disks.

 The basic technology used in the earliest hard disk has not
changed all the much over the years, although the size and
capacity of the drives has .

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• The manufacturers of Hard Disks are

 Western Digital
 Seagate
 Toshiba
 Hitachi
 Quantum
 Maxtor

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 Hard Disk Construction:
Even though there are different types and styles of hard disks
on the market, all have roughly the same physical components.

The major components in a typical hard disk are as follows:

• Disk platters
• Spindle and spindle motors
• Read/write heads
• Head actuators
• Air filters
• Logic card
• Connectors and jumpers
• Bezel.
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 Except the connectors and jumpers all the other
components are housed in a metal case called Head
Disk Assembly (HDA).

Disk platters:
The primary unit of hard disk drive is its storage media
i.e. platters or disks over which the data is recorded.
The Primary two materials used in disks are
1. Glass 2. Aluminum alloy

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 The traditional material for platters was an aluminum alloy,
which provided strength and was light weight.

 The drawback is aluminum disks tend to flex by expanding

under heat.

 Hence, now many disk drives’ platters use a Glass-Ceramic

composite material.

 These were more rigid and were less than half as thick as the
aluminum disk. They do not expand with changes in
temperature.
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NTTF_CP 08_SEM 4_PC HARDWARE
 Most of the top hard disk manufacturers use Glass composite
material in their drives.
Eg: Seagate, Toshiba and Maxtor.

 Most PC hard drives have 2 platters. These number of platters

used in drives varies between 1-10.

 The form factor of a disk is essentially the size of its

platters, although it has also come to mean the size of the
drive bay into which the drive can be installed .

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 Each platter is mounted on the disk spindle so that
each side of the disk can be accessed with a
read/write head.

 The surface of each disk platter is polished and then

covered with a layer of magnetic material which is
used to store data.

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Spindle and Spindle Motor:

 This disk platters are mounted to a spindle & separated by disk

spacers that keeps the platters evenly spaced.

 The spacers provides a consistent spacing that is needed for

the read/write heads to have access to the top of one disk and
the bottom of one above it.

 The spindle rotates the platters at a uniform speed of 3600,

4800, 5400, 7200 rpm and newer devices at 10000-15000 rpm.

 The motor that rotates the spindle and disks mounted to it is

called
spindle motor.

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 The spindle motor is connected directly to the spindle without
using belts or gears so that the drive mechanism is free of
noise and
vibration.

 Most of the hard disk failures are mainly due to spindle motor
failure.

 The spindle motor is a brushless and sensor less DC motor,

that is attached directly to the disk spindle.

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There are 2 types of spindle motor.

1. In- hub motor (placed inside the Head Disk

Assembly).

2. Bottom- mount motor (attached to the spindle

outside the HDA case).

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Read/Write Heads:

 Each side of a disk platter has media applied to it that allows it

to store data; hence one read/write head is present on each
side of the platter.

 The read/write heads are all connected to the same actuator

mechanism which moves the head uniformly in and out from
the spindle to the edge of the platter.

 The heads are floating over the surface of the platters on a

cushion of air pressure. The space between the platter and the
head is called floating height or Head Gap.

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NTTF_CP 08_SEM 4_PC HARDWARE
 There are 4 types of read/write heads used in hard disk drives

1.Ferrite head
2.Metal-in-Gap
3.Thin film
4.Magneto-Resistive.

 Now all higher capacity drives uses ‘Thin film’ type.

 Disk drives have a Landing zone where the read/write head

can safely land when the disk is powered off. That zone will not
have data stored on it.

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Head Actuator:

• The read/write heads of the hard disk are moved into position
by the head actuator.

• The mechanism is used to extend and retract heads so that

data can be read or written to the disk platter.

• Different types of actuator are:

i) Stepper motor actuator.
ii) Voice coil actuator.

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Air filter:

• Most of the drives have two air filters

.Re circulating filter
.Barometric or breather filter

• These filters are permanently sealed inside the HDA and never
have to be changed.

• The purpose of Re-circulating filter is to trap any particles of

media that may be scraped off disk by the read/write heads or
any small particles that may have been trapped in the HDA
during manufacturing.

• The HDA has a vent that allows the outside air to equalize the
air pressure through a Breather filter.

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Logic Board:

• Hard disk drives include logic boards that control the functions
of the drive’s spindle and head actuator and interact with the
device controller to pass data to and from the disk.

• Replacing the logic board of a disk drive is a easy way to

trouble shoot a drive.

• The logic board is usually mounted to the disk drive through a

plug connector and one or two screws.

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Connectors and Jumpers:

• Three general types of connectors found on most disk systems

Data.
Power.

• The third type is an optional connector on most drives for

grounding purposes.

• The jumpers on the disk drive are used to configure the drive as
a master or slave on a shared interface , as well as other
configuration settings.

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Bezel:

 Older drives included a face plate called bezel.

 Older AT cabinets not having LED on the front, in such cases

the drive bezel has the LED for activity and power.

 Now all cabinets provide this function, so today’s drives do not

offer a bezel as a standard feature.

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 5.2 Hard drive Interfaces

• The mechanism that controls the transmission of data between

the CPU and other devices on the PC is an Interface

• Disk storage devices such as hard disk drives, floppy disk

drives, tape drives, CD-ROM drives, DVD-ROM drives, all use
a interface to move data to & from themselves and the rest of
the PC.

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As hard disks and other storage devices are manufactured to
work with a wide range of PC system, a variety of interface
protocols standards have been adopted to ensure compatibility.

The interface standards that have been used with hard disk
drives are:
1.ST506 (Seagate Technology)
2.ESDI (The Enhanced Small Disk Interface)
3.IDE (The Integrated Drive Electronics)
4.SCSI (Small Computer System Interface)
5.FC-AL (Fiber Channel-Arbitrated Loop)
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 The first two are largely obsolete now.

 Most of the hard disk in use today are either an IDE or a SCSI
hard disk drive interface.

 FC-AL is found on very high-end disk array products

associated with large network servers.

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ST506/412 Interface:

 Seagate technology developed the ST506/412 drive interface

for its 5MB & 10MB in the early 1980’s.

 Nearly all manufacturers making hard disk drives for PC used

the ST506/412 as a Universal standard.

 This interface is obsolete in today’s market because it lacks

the capacity, speed and expandability.

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ESDI:

 The Enhanced Small Disk Interface standard replaced the

ST506/412 standard.

 It introduces endec (encode & decode) into the drive. ESDI

drives were used on the high end branded systems in the late
1980’s.

 Because of the lower cost, higher performing IDE drives made

it largely obsolete .

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IDE:

 The IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) interface is one of the

more popular interface technologies in use day, was basically
developed as an alternative for SCSI technology which was
expensive.

 IDE technology integrates the disk controller as a part of the

disk drive. It is also known as AT attachment (ATA) interface.

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 Since the drive controller is a part of the disk drive, IDE device
can usually be connected directly to the mother board.

 An IDE drive should never be low-level formatted, since it is

performed at the factory during manufacturing and should never
be performed by the user or a technician.

 Only high-level format is necessary to prepare the disk partition

for the operating system and data.

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 The IDE supports up to 2 x 528 MB drives. EIDE (Enhanced
IDE) also newer version can support up to 4 multi gigabyte
drives.

 IDE cards usually multifunction cards that not only support the
hard disk, but a floppy drive, a game port, serial port & more.

 Another standard closely related to the EIDE standard is the

ATAPI(ATA Packet Interface), an interface for the CD-ROMs
and Tape drives that connect to common (ATA) IDE connector.

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SCSI Interface:

 The Small Computer System Interface is a standard that is

made up of collection of interface standards covering range of
peripheral devices like hard disk, tape drives, optical drives,
CD-ROMs and disk arrays.

 Up to 8 SCSI devices can connect to a single SCSI controller

by sharing the common interface called a SCSI bus or SCSI
chain.

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 Like IDE devices SCSI controllers are built into the devices .

 Each connected device is assigned a unique device number to

differentiate it from the other devices.

 The SCSI controller communicates with the devices on the bus

by sending a message encoded with the unique device number,
which is also included in any reply sent by the device.

 A SCSI bus must be terminated to prevent unclaimed or

misdirected messages from bouncing back onto the bus.

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FC-AL Interface:

 The FC-AL (Fiber Channel-Arbitrated Loop), or fiber

channel for short, is used with very large systems or
networks that incorporate high bandwidth and high-end
disk arrays.

 It has built-in data recovery and fault tolerant

components.

 Fiber channel disks are much more expensive than

disks using other interfaces including SCSI devices.

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 FC-AL uses fiber optic cables to connect the hard
drives to the controller and the PC.

 It transfer data at the rate of over 100MB per second.

 It supports upto 127 devices and the devices can be

as far as 10KMtr apart.

 FC-AL devices can be hot swapped.

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 5.3
Data Organization

 Both hard disk and floppy disks set organization

schemes that allow them to store & retrieve data
later.

 The disk is organized into cylinders, tracks, sectors

and clusters. Remember that this organization were
placed on the disk when it was manufactured.

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Tracks

 As illustrated in figure tracks are concentric areas on the disk

that complete one circumference of the disk.

 On a hard disk, there can be 1000 tracks or more.

 The first track is a track-0, at the outermost edge of the disk

where data is usually written first.

 Tracks of the same number on all platters of the drive form a

cylinder.

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 Sectors

 Sectors divide the disk into a number of cross-sections that

intersect all of the tracks on the disk.

 Sectors break tracks into addressable pieces, as illustrated in

the figure.

 All sectors are typically 512 bytes in length and disk drivers
have from 100 to 300 sectors per tracks.

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 Cylinders
 Cylinders reflect how the read/write heads move in and out of
the disk platters as a group.

 This grouping technique is unique to hard disks.

 A cylinder is the logical grouping of the same track on each

disk surface.

 For example, if a hard disk drive has three platters as shown in

fig. it has six disk surfaces and six head for each surface.

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 If the actuator arm has positioned the read/write heads on the
outermost track(i.e., track 0) on each platter surface, then the
collection of outermost tracks are forming a cylinder 0
collectively.

 Data is written vertically between disks following the track and

cylinder path, which eliminates the need to move the
read/write heads.

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 Clusters

 A cluster is formed from groups of sectors.

 This logical grouping is used by operating systems to track data

on the disk.

 There are normally around 64 sectors to a cluster, but the size of

the disk drive and the operating system in use determine the
actual number of sectors in a cluster.

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 Multiple Zone Recording

 This a technique used on some disk drivers to eliminate the

effect of the shape of the disk in the recording sectors, more
sectors are placed on the tracks closer to the outer edge of the
disk and fewer sectors are placed on the tracks closer to the
inside edge.

 Placing different number of sectors per track on a disk surface

is called zone bit recording(ZBR).

 Based on the program, groups the tracks into zones.

 All tracks within a specific zone are given a constant number of

sectors.

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 Movement through the disk from the innermost zone to the
outer most zone passes you through multiple zones, each with a
higher number of sectors than the one before.

 The software that you run on a computer assumes that each

track has a constant number of sectors.

 Consumer demand for greater and greater capacity on smaller

and smaller drives has led to a growth in the use of ZBR.

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 5.4 Hard disk performance indicators

 The most common performance specifications are:

 Seek Time: This is one of the more important performance

indicators of the speed of a hard disk.

 It is measured in milliseconds (ms), it is the time required for

the head actuator to move the read/write heads from one track
to the next.

 Seek time does not include Latency period.

 Latency period is the measure of the time required to move to

a sector containing a specific data location.

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 Average seek time is a commonly used bench mark for
comparing drive performance.

 Average seek time is calculated from the drives performance

over a number of randomly located request.

 Most current disk driver have average seek times 8 to 15ms.

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 Access Time:
Access time = Seek time + Latency or Rotational period.

 Latency is also measured in milli sec. 7200RPM is a very

common disk rotational speed today, the Latency is around
4ms.

 As the rotational speed of the drive increases, the Latency

time decreases proportionally.

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Data Transfer Rate:

 This is the amount of data that can be moved between disk

and RAM in one second.

 It will be in a number of megabytes per second.

 The higher the data transfer rate lesser the time a user can
wait for software to load or data to be retrieved.

 Data transfer rates commonly for today’s hard disk driver from
33MB/sec to 133 MB/s.

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Disk Capacity:
 Very important criteria for disk performance is how much data it
can actually store.

 Disk drives typically have two capacity ratings:

1. Unformatted 2. Formatted

 The formatted capacity usually the most important metric for

most people, since it is the one that states the usable disk
space on the drive.

 Nearly all drives being sold today are in the range of 160GB to
750GB and enter into Terabyte level.

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 Areal Density:

 The Areal density of a disk is an indication of a drives storage

capacity.

 Areal density of a disk = number of bits per inch (bpi) (the

number of bits in the total length of a track) multiplied with
number of tracks on the disk.

 The result is the number of bits (expressed as megabits and

gigabits) per square inch on the disk

 An Areal density of around 1.5GB per square inch is common

on newer disk drives.

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 Interleaving
 When referring to a computer hard drive, interleave or
interleaving is a method of making data accessed more
efficiently by organizing the sectors on the hard drive.

 This method was used in ST506/412 drives in earlier days

when the disk controllers were not quick enough to read
continuous sector’s data. because the controllers cannot read
data fast enough to keep up with the spinning speed of the disk
& there was a possibility of
missing some sectors consistently.

 Interleave is expressed as a ratio, "N:1", where "N" represents

how far away the second logical sector is from the first, how far
the third is from the second, and so on.

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NTTF_CP 08_SEM 4_PC HARDWARE
 A disk drive with an interleave ratio 3:1 (i.e. 3 minus 1=2)
writes one sector and then skips two before writing the next .

 Modern computer’s disk controller interleave ratio is 1:1 only

that means there is no interleaving at all that means the disk
controller is better synchronized to the speed of the disk’s
rotation.

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5.6.1 CD Media

 Like hard disk and floppy, CD also stores data in digital form
with values 1’s & 0’s.

 Hard disk and floppy store data in magnetic form, data on a CD

is a physical recording techniques.

 CDs are mass produced by stamping the pattern of pits and

lands on to a molded poly carbonate disc (as a substrate) of
4.75inch dia & 1.2mm thick.

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Compact Disc Concepts

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Structure of CD

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 The process is called Mastering, the CD produced in this way is
said to have been Mastered.

 The substrate surface and it’s pits are then covered with a
shiny, reflective metalic(silver or aluminum) coating so that it will
reflect laser light.

 Finally, a label can be silk-screened on to the finished disc

before it is tested and packaged.

 A disc manufactured in this way is called a single session disc.

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CD –ROM Drive Operations

 The CD-ROM is a single sided media and data is recorded on

one side so that it requires one read head and read assembly
which contains the mirror and read lens.

 The recorded spiral pattern on CD has pits and lands.

 The data is placed on substrate core directly beneath the

CD’s labels. The figure shows the layers of the CD.

 During playback CDs use a highly focused laser beam and

laser detector to sense the presence or absence of pits.

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Figure shows the CD reading behavior:

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 The laser in a CD-ROM drive is a beam of light that is emitted
from infrared laser diode.

 The laser diode/detector pair is mounted on a carriage that

follows the spiral track across the CD.

 The light from the laser reflects off the mirror and then passes
through a focusing lens that directs the light directly on a
specific point on a disc.

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 Laser is directed at the underside of the CD, where it
penetrates the substrate which is about 1mm thick.

 When the laser hits a land, it’s light reflects off the metallic
coating to a photo detector.

 When it hits a pit, the light does not reflect back to the
detector.

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 So, the amount of light reflected depends on whether the laser
is hitting a land or pit.

 The photo detector converts the light in to an electrical signal,

the strength of which is determined by the intensity of the
reflected light.

 A complex decoding process is required to convert this

sequence of pits and lands in to meaningful information.

 The (EFM) eight-to-fourteen modulation is used with CD-

ROMs.

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 The Technology of CD and CD-ROM

 The CD is initially used as an audio storage device to replace the

cassette tape. Later it is found useful for computer.

 All software, database, books, encyclopedias etc. are distributed on

CD-ROM as a common method.

 Since majority of the software available only on CD-ROM, PCs will

have CD-ROM drive.

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 Unlike floppy or hard disk drives CD drives are not having
concentric tracks and sectors.

 CDs are recorded as a single continuous spiral track running

from the inner to the outer area.

 The CD-ROM disc offers about 16000 tracks per inch(TPI).

 The physical media for recording data, programs and

multimedia on a CD-ROM is the same as that used to record
the music.

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 5.6.2 CD-ROM Formats:

 The format of the CD is the pattern and the method

used to record its contents.

 The music CDs and data CDs are the two that most
people familiar with are the formats used, but there are
a few others logical format CD.

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• They are listed with respect to the book in which their
Technical Specification is defined
.CD-Digital Audio --- Red Book
.CD-ROM (used by software publishers, data base and
multimedia developers)--- yellow Book
.Video CD(VCD) --- White Book
.Photo CD --- Orange Book
.CD-Intractive Media --- Green Book
.Enhanced Music CD (CD+) or CD Plus --- Blue Book
(combines both Audio & Video Tracks)

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