1. Understanding Hard Drive Terminology

2. Disk geometry
The following sections introduce you to disk geometry — essentially the physical components of a drive that make up your data storage solution. You also find out some general terminology about hard drives and hard drive storage in this section.
Platters
A platter is a physical object (actually, a plate) inside the hard disk that is responsible for storing the data.
A platter is similar to a music record and a hard disk has many platters.
The platters are similar to records on a record player in the sense that they spin on a spindle that runs through the center of all the platters.

3. Disk geometry
Each platter has two sides for storing information, and each side of the platter has a unique ID.
The ID for the first side of the first platter is 0, and each side increases by 1.
For example, two platters are in the disk, the first platter has side 0 and side 1, and the second platter has side 2 and side 3.
Because each side of the platter has a writing mechanism, many people use the terms “head” and “side” interchangeably.
The head is more accurately called the read/write head because it moves over the disk surface and reads from or writes to the disk.
Like a needle on a record player, the read/write head moves over the surface of the disk with the help of an arm, called the actuator arm or the head positioning mechanism.

4. Disk geometry
Each platter surface on the disk has its own read/write head.
When information is written to the disk, the read/write head moves to the same track on all platters in a single movement and then writes the data across the same track on all platters.
The actuator arm has multiple read/write heads on it.
Tracks
Just like there are grooves (tracks) on a music record, there are also tracks on each platter.
These tracks are evenly spaced across the platter’s surface.

6. Disk geometry
Sectors
The platter is divided into pie-shaped slices, called sectors.
Now the confusing thing about sectors is that where a track intersects with a sector, sector blocks are created — also known as sectors!
Each sector (block) — 512 bytes in size — is the actual storage area for data.
Each pie-sliced sector has an address; the first sector is sector 1, the second sector is sector 2, and so on.
So, each sector block has an address comprising the platter side number, the sector, and track number.

7. Disk geometry Clusters
For example, data can be saved to side 1, sector 2, track 4 — which is the address of a 512-byte sector block.
Note that the term sector block is a term that I made up for this discussion; the term sector is also used to describe the 512-byte blocks.
Clusters
A group of sectors makes up a cluster, which is the allocation unit for a file — meaning where a file is saved.
When a partition is formatted, the file system determines the cluster size based upon the partition size.

8. Disk geometry
For example, a 2GB FAT partition uses a 32K cluster size.
That same 2GB partition formatted as FAT32 uses only a 4K cluster size.
Having a partition use a 4K cluster size means that eight sectors make up a cluster.
Keep in mind that after a file is saved to the cluster, no other file can occupy that cluster.
For example, if you have a 32K cluster size and you save a 3K file to the hard disk, the file is saved to an empty cluster — but only 3K of that cluster is used, and the remaining 29K is empty.
The remaining 29K is now considered unusable space; no other file can be saved to that unused 29K.

9. Disk geometry
Cylinders
All platters in the hard disk contain the same number of tracks, but that number varies from one hard disk to another.
These tracks are numbered from the outside in, starting with 0 (zero).
For example, on a platter with ten tracks, the track closest to the outer edge of the platter is track 0, and the track closest to the center is track 9.
A cylinder consists of the same track on both sides of all the platters.

10. Disk geometry
In other words, when you reference track 0, you reference a particular track on a particular platter; however, when you reference cylinder 0, you reference track 0 on all platters.
If you know the number of cylinders, heads, and sectors per track, you can calculate the size of a disk.
For example, if a drive has 4,092 cylinders, 16 heads, and 63 sectors per track, the size of the disk is 2,111,864,832 bytes (2.1GB).
The formula to calculate the size of the disk is cylinders × number of heads × number of sectors per track × 512 bytes per sector

11. Read/write process Platters are divided into 512-byte sectors.
These sectors are the area on the platter that data is written to.
The platters have a magnetic coating applied that is extremely sensitive to magnetism.
While the platters spin, the read/write head moves from track to track until it reaches the desired track.
Then it waits for the appropriate sector to move underneath it, at which time the read/write head is energized to apply a magnetic charge to the particles in the disk coating.

12. Read/write process
This changes the particle binary state from 0 to 1, thus creating data.
The same happens when the data needs to be read: The read/write head moves over the appropriate sector and reads the data that resides in the sector.
The read/write heads don’t actually touch the surface of the disk platters; instead, they hover about 10 micro-inches (or millionths of an inch) above it. (That’s not even enough space to place a hair between the read/write head and the platter’s surface.)
This design helps improve disk performance because a read/write head that makes contact with the platter causes friction, slowing down the rotation speed of the disk and creating extra heat.

13. Performance
Disk performance can be measured in terms of several important characteristics:
Seek time is how long it takes to move the read/write heads to the desired track. Seek time is measured in milliseconds (ms), or one-thousandth of a second.
Latency is how long it takes for the appropriate sector to move under the read/write head. Latency is measured in milliseconds.
Access time describes the overall speed of the disk. It is a combination of seek time and latency. The lower the access time, the better.
Spin speed is how fast the platters spin, measured in rotations per minute (rpm). The larger the rpm value, the faster the disk, which means less latency.

14. Master Boot Record
The Master Boot Record (MBR) is the first sector on the first track of the first side of the first platter; it holds the operating system (OS) boot code that controls the loading of the OS.
The MBR also holds drive characteristics, such as the partition table. During the boot process, the system has to find a primary partition that is active — it does this by looking at the partition table in the MBR.
In general, if anything goes wrong with the MBR, you will not be able to boot the system. Because the boot record is always in the same location on every disk, it becomes very easy for a malicious hacker to write viruses that modify or corrupt the MBR. This is one reason you should always run virus-detection software.

15. LBA and ECHS
Logical Block Addressing (LBA) and Extended Cylinder/Head/Sector (ECHS)
Essentially, LBA and ECHS perform the same goal: namely, performing sector translation, which is the hard drive controller lying to the BIOS about the drive geometry.
LBA was developed by Western Digital, and ECHS was Seagate’s solution to recognizing larger drives.
You need sector translation because the original BIOS code found on computers was limited to seeing only 1024 cylinders, 16 heads, and 63 sectors — which is a total drive size of 504MB (1024 × 16 × 63 × 512).
However, if you bought a 2.1GB hard disk, your BIOS would not recognize it because the geometry of the 2.1GB drive is too high for the BIOS.

16. LBA and ECHS
In this example, the geometry of the drive is 16,384 clusters, 4 heads, and 63 sectors.

17. LBA and ECHS
Here’s an example of why you take the lowest value in each category. If the hard disk supports only 4 heads, only 4 heads are detected. Although the BIOS supports a potential 16 heads, that doesn’t mean that they are actually there.
So the problem is that you purchased a 2.1GB drive, but the system recognizes only 132MB! The solution to this problem is LBA or ECHS — again, both technologies offer the same solution. They were just built by different manufacturers.
An LBA-enabled BIOS can recognize 1024 cylinders, 256 heads, and 63 sectors — essentially being able to support more heads on the drive. As a result, the drive lies to the BIOS by using a translation factor of usually 2, 4, 8, or 16. The physical dimensions of the drive are taken and manipulated by the translation factor to calculate the logical dimensions reported to the BIOS.

18. LBA and ECHS
In my example, 16,384 cylinders are too many cylinders, so they are divided by translation factor of 16 to reach the LBA maximum number of cylinders supported. To make up for the loss in cylinders, the heads are then multiplied by 16, ensuring that the logical number of heads falls under the LBA limit of 254.

19. LBA and ECHS
To leverage larger size drives, your BIOS would have to support LBA or ECHS — which most BIOS do today.
Notice that an LBA-enabled BIOS can support only an 8.4GB drive — and we are way past that drive size today.
Today’s BIOS support the INT13 extensions, developed by Phoenix Technologies, which allow the systems to see drives past 137GB in size!
The BIOS can recognize larger size drives because it simply identifies the drives by the number of sectors.

20. Basic Hard Disk Drive Components
The basic components of a typical hard disk drive are as follows
■ Disk platters
■ Read/write heads
■ Head actuator mechanism
■ Spindle motor (inside platter hub)
■ Logic board (controller or Printed Circuit Board)
■ Cables and connectors
■ Configuration items (such as jumpers or switches)
The platters, spindle motor, heads, and head actuator mechanisms usually are contained in a sealed chamber called the head disk assembly (HDA).
Other parts external to the drive’s HDA, such as the logic boards, bezel, and other configuration or mounting hardware, can be disassembled from the drive.

21. Basic Hard Disk Drive Components

22. Hard Disk Platters (Disks)
A hard disk drive has one or more platters, or disks. Hard disks for PC systems have been available in several form factors over the years. Normally, the physical size of a drive is expressed as the size of the platters.
Platters were originally made from an aluminum/magnesium alloy, which provides both strength and light weight.
However, manufacturers’ desire for higher and higher densities and smaller drives has led to the use of platters made of glass (or, more technically, a glass-ceramic composite).
One such material, produced by the Dow Corning Corporation, is called MemCor.
MemCor is composed of glass with ceramic implants, enabling it to resist cracking better than pure glass.

23. Recording Media
No matter which substrate is used, the platters are covered with a thin layer of a magnetically retentive substance, called the medium, on which magnetic information is stored. Three popular types of magnetic media are used on hard disk platters:
■ Oxide media
■ Thin-film media
■ AFC (antiferromagnetically coupled) media
IBM introduced AFC media starting with the 2 1/2" Travelstar 30GN series of notebook drives introduced in 2001; they were the first drives on the market to use AFC media.
Thin-film sputtered media are created by first coating the aluminum platters with a layer of nickel phosphorus and then applying the cobalt-alloy magnetic material in a continuous vacuum-deposition process called sputtering.

24. Read/Write Heads
A hard disk drive usually has one read/write head for each platter surface (meaning that each platter has two sets of read/write heads—one for the top side and one for the bottom side).
These heads are connected, or ganged, on a single movement mechanism. The heads, therefore, move across the platters in unison.
As disk drive technology has evolved, so has the design of the read/write head. The earliest heads were simple iron cores with coil windings (electromagnets). By today’s standards, the original head designs were enormous in physical size and operated at very low recording densities. Over the years, head designs have evolved from the first simple ferrite core designs into the magneto-resistive and giant magneto-resistive types available today.

25. Head Actuator Mechanisms
Possibly more important than the heads themselves is the mechanical system that moves them: the head actuator.
This mechanism moves the heads across the disk and positions them accurately above the desired cylinder. Many variations on head actuator mechanisms are in use, but all fall into one of two basic categories:
■ Stepper motor actuators
■ Voice coil actuators
The use of one or the other type of actuator has profound effects on a drive’s performance and reliability. The effects are not limited to speed; they also include accuracy, sensitivity to temperature, position, vibration, and overall reliability.

26. Head Actuator Mechanisms
Stepper Motor Actuators
A stepper motor is an electrical motor that can “step,” or move, from position to position, with mechanical detents or click-stop positions. If you were to grip the spindle of one of these motors and spin it manually, you would hear a clicking or buzzing sound as the motor passed each detent position with a soft click.
Voice Coil Actuators
The voice coil actuators used in virtually all hard disk drives made today—unlike stepper motor actuators—use a feedback signal from the drive to accurately determine the head positions and adjust them, if necessary. This arrangement provides significantly greater performance, accuracy, and reliability than traditional stepper motor actuator designs.

27. Head Actuator Mechanisms
The two main types of voice-coil positioner mechanisms are
■ Linear voice-coil actuators
■ Rotary voice-coil actuators
The two types differ only in the physical arrangement of the magnets and coils.
Servo Mechanisms
Three servo mechanism designs have been used to control voice coil positioners over the years:
■ Wedge servo
■ Embedded servo
■ Dedicated servo

28. Air Filters Nearly all hard disk drives have two air filters.
One is called the recirculating filter, and the other is called either a barometric or breather filter.
These filters are permanently sealed inside the drive and are designed never to be changed for the life of the drive, unlike many older mainframe hard disks that had changeable filters.
Hard Disk Temperature Acclimation
Because most hard drives have a filtered port to bleed air in to or out of the HDA, moisture can enter the drive, and after some period of time, it must be assumed that the humidity inside any hard disk is similar to that outside the drive.

29. Spindle Motors
The motor that spins the platters is called the spindle motor because it is connected to the spindle around which the platters revolve.
Spindle motors in hard disk drives are always connected directly; no belts or gears are involved.
The motor must be free of noise and vibration; otherwise, it can transmit a rumble to the platters, which can disrupt reading and writing operations.
The spindle motor also must be precisely controlled for speed. The platters in hard disk drives revolve at speeds ranging from 3,600 rpm to 15,000 rpm (60–250 revolutions per second) or more, and the motor has a control circuit with a feedback loop to monitor and control this speed precisely.

30. Other parts
All hard disk drives have one or more logic boards mounted on them. The logic boards contain the electronics that control the drive’s spindle and head actuator systems and present data to the controller in some agreed-upon form.
Hard disk drives typically have several connectors for interfacing to the computer, receiving power, and sometimes grounding to the system chassis. Most drives have at least these three types of connectors:
■ Interface connector(s)
■ Power connector
■ Optional ground connector (tab)
To configure a hard disk drive for installation in a system, you usually must set several jumpers (and, possibly, terminating resistors) properly.