Data Organisation

• A binary digit (bit) can be a 0 or 1, called as a bit.

• A character of data is represented by a string of 8 bits,
which is called as a Byte.
• In a computer system, data is organised in the following
ways:
• Meaningful data such as a name or an address is called as a
data field.
• Related data fields are organised into a data record which is
used to describe a certain object. Eg. A customer’s record that
may contain an ID, name, address, etc.
• Related data records with the same structures are grouped
together as a data file (data table). Eg. A file that contains all
customer records.
• In a business data storage, all the related data files are linked to
form a database. Eg. The database for an e-commerce website.
 An Example of Data Organisation
• The following shows the contents of a data file
• Each row in the file is a data record
• Each piece of data item Is a data field
 Data Measurement
• Byte is the basic unit for measuring the size of data.
• Commonly used units for data size are
Kilobyte (KB, = 1024 bytes, 210 bytes)
Megabyte (MB, = 1024 KB, 220 bytes, approximately 106 bytes)
Gigabyte (GB, = 1024 MB, 230 bytes, approximately 109 bytes)
Terabyte (TB, = 1024 GB, 240 bytes, approximately 1012 bytes)
Petabyte (PB, = 1024 TB, 250 bytes, approximately 1015 bytes).
 Disk Structure
• A hard disk contains a number of
metal platters coated with magnetic
material on surfaces to store data.
• The surface of a magnetic disk is
organized into:
• Tracks: Concentric rings on the
platter.
• Cylinders: Collection of all tracks on
platters which are horizontally in the
same position.
• Sectors: Radial lines spaced
• Disk read/write heads move
concurrently along the fixed disk
arm. The disk itself rotates to provide
access to every sector.
Hard Disk Structure
 Physical Disk Structure
• Physical disk structure is the physical existence on the
disk surfaces.
• Formatting is the operation which creates the physical
disk structure.
• Formatting organizes and marks the surface of a disk
into tracks, sectors , and cylinders.
• It is also sometimes (incorrectly) a term used to signify
the action of writing a file system to a disk (especially
in the MS Windows/MS DOS world).
 Logical Disk Structure
• Logical disk structure is used to describe how disk
surface is organised to store data. It is only a conceptual
definition and may not exist physically.
• Partition: A disk can be coarsely divided into partitions –
each of which functions as an independent storage
device.
• Drive: A partition of a disk.
• Block: The operating system views all the disk space as
arranged into an array of fixed size logical blocks. A
logical block is the smallest unit of data to transfer.
 File Allocation
• File allocation describes how a file is stored in secondary
storage and how it can be accessed by computer
programs
• There are three types of file allocation:
o Contiguous allocation
o Chained or linked allocation
o Indexed allocation (e.g inode)
• Reference:
File allocation
http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/file-allocation-methods/
 Contiguous Allocation
• A single contiguous set of blocks is allocated to a file at the
time of file creation.
• The operation system only stores the location of the
starting block and the total size of the file.
• To access information in block number B, this information
resides at the location of starting block + B
• Supports random access:
The operating system knows exactly where every block is
after the starting block by a single calculation.
• Fragmentation of unused space (external fragmentation)
will occur, needs compaction (defragmentation).
• Often used in optical discs rather than magnetic disks
Contiguous Allocation (cont.)
 Chained (Linked) Allocation

• File is saved as a collection of non-contiguous blocks

File is implemented as a linked list of blocks
• Each block contains a pointer to the address of next
block. Last block contains invalid (negative) number as
the pointer (End-Of-File marker)
• Directory entry contains the head (starting) block
number and length of the file
• Chained allocation is good for sequential access, bad
for random access
Chained (Linked) Allocation (cont.)
 Indexed (inode) Allocation
• The inode system is used in Unix.
• Each file has an inode and all inodes are numbered.
• In addition to inode, there is a specialised block in a
file known as index.
• The blocks in a file are indexed.
• The index points to the addresses (locations) of the
blocks.
• A binary tree is usually used in searching index for a
particular block.
• Reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzAY_mxFDAI
 The Binary Tree and Inode
• Inode uses Binary tree
method to search for
block locations
• Each index node
contains 2 links to other
nodes. 8-11 12-15

• The distance from the

top to the data blocks is
d
• Example:
• k=2 (for binary tree)
• n=the number of
data blocks in a file
 The Binary Tree and Inodes (cont.)
• The General formula:
2d = n therefore ， d = log2(n)
• In the case of binary tree, k = 2 (binary)
• For example ：
If there are 16 blocks in a file, n = 16
The maximum number of access to the file to find the location
of a particular block is:
d = log2(16) = 4
This means that it takes the maximum of 4 access to find the
location of any block in the file of 16 blocks.
• Quiz:
What is the maximum number of access to find a block if
there are 30 blocks in a file?
 The Big O Notation
• It is a mathematical notation, indicating “in the range
of…”
Used in file access calculation, it means “the maximum
number of access”
• Let n be the number of blocks in a file. To find a
particular block how many disk accesses does it take?
• Contiguous: O(1) “about 1”
• Chained/Linked: O(n) “roughly n blocks”
The average is n/2 blocks
• Indexed/Inode: O(log2(n)) blocks