Module 4

Memory Systems

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 Secondary Storage – Magnetic
Hard Disk

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 Continued

Magnetic disk system consists of one or more disks

mounted on a common spindle
A thin magnetic film is deposited on each disk,
usually on both sides
The disks are placed in a rotary drive so that the
magnetized surface move in close proximity to
read/write heads
The disks rotate at a uniform speed
Each head consists of a magnetic yoke and a
magnetizing coil
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 Continued

 The read/write heads are movable, there is one head per

surface, it can move radially across stack of disks to provide
selection of individual tracks
 The disk system consists of three key parts
1. Disk – Where data is present
2. Disk Drive – contains an electromechanical mechanism
which spins the disk and moves read/write heads
3. Disk Controller – Electronic circuit that controls operation of
overall disk system

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 Continued

 Digital information is stored on the magnetic film by applying

current pulses of suitable polarity to the magnetizing coil
 This causes magnetization of film in the area immediately
underneath the head and switch to a direction parallel to the
applied field
 The same head can be used in reading the stored information
 In this case change in magnetic field around the vicinity of the
head caused by the movement of film relative to the yoke
induces a voltage in the coil.
 The polarity of the voltage induced determines state of the
magnetism

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 Continued

 Changes in the magnetic field under the head can be sensed

during read operation
 If binary states 0 and 1 are represented by two opposite state
of magnetism, then the voltage will get induced only when a 0
to 1 or from 1 to 0 transition occurs
 In case of consecutive 0’s and 1’s voltage get induced only at
the beginning and end of the stream

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 Manchester Encoding or Phase
Encoding
 In Magnetic disks, the drawback is that in case of reading a
sequence of zero’s and one’s, the change in magnetism occurs
only at the starting bit and at the end bit
 In order to overcome this problem and to read the intermediate
bit between start bit and end bit, a new technique is used called
as Manchester Encoding or Phase Encoding
 In Manchester encoding, the clocking information is combined
with data, hence change in magnetization occurs at midpoint of
each bit period

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 Continued

 The drawback of Manchester encoding is its poor bit storage

density
 The space required to represent each bit must be large enough to
accommodate two changes in magnetism
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 Organization and Accessing of Data
on a Disk

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 Continued

 Each surface is divided into concentric tracks

 Each track is divided into sectors
 The set of corresponding tracks on all surfaces of a stack of disk
forms a logical cylinder
 The data are accessed by specifying surface number, track
number and sector number
 Each sector usually consists of 512 bytes of data, other sizes are
also used
 Apart from data, sector contains Error Correcting Codes(ECC).
ECC bits are used to detect and correct errors that may occurred
using read/write operation

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 Continued

 To distinguish between two sectors, a small gap is found

called intersector gap
 In the above figure equal sector partition is found i.e each
sector is 512 bytes.
 One of the sector should be primary sector and remaining are
secondary.

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 Access Time

 Access Time is the sum of Seek Time and Latency Time

 Seek Time: Amount of time required to move read/write head to
proper track
 Seek Time ranges from 5 to 8 ms
 Latency Time or Rotational Delay: Amount of time elapses
after head is positioned over the correct track until the starting
position of the addressed sector passes under read/write head
 On an average it’s the time for half rotation of the disk

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 Disk Controller

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 Floppy Disk

 The disk discussed so far are known as Rigid Disk or Hard

Disk
 Floppy disks are smaller, simpler and cheaper disk units that
consists of a flexible, removable plastic diskette coated with
magnetic material
 The diskette is enclosed in a plastic jacket, which has an
opening where read/write head can be positioned
 A hole in the center of the diskette allows a spindle
mechanism in the disk drive to position and rotate the diskette

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 Continued

 Advantages:
1. Low Cost
2. Shipping Convenience
 Disadvantages
1. Smaller Storage Capacity
2. Longer Access Time
3. Higher Failure Rates

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 RAID Disk Arrays

 The access time in disk drives is in the order of milliseconds,

which is quite slower when compared to the speed of the
processor
 One way to reduce this limitation is to operate multiple disks at a
time. Several methods are proposed, the very first method is
called RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks). Later it
changed to Redundant Array of Independent Disks.
 Prominent among RAID are RAID 0 and RAID 1

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 Continued

 RAID 0: In RAID 0, a single large file is divided into number of

smaller pieces and store these pieces in the different disks. This
process is called data striping.
 When the read operation is initiated, all disks run in parallel and
the data are accessed simultaneously
 RAID 1:RAID 1 is designed to provide better reliability by
storing identical copies of data on the two disks. The two disks
are said to be mirrors of each other. If one fails, all read/write
operations are directed to mirror drive

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 Continued

 Disadvantage od RAID 0 is that each disk has different access

time, which further increases the overall access time of the
data

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