Hard Disk Drive
Hard Disk Drive
Introduction
Hard Disk Drive is a nonvolatile data storage device, it means that the storage device retains the data even when no power is supplied to the computer. Some of the profound changes in PC hard disk storage are its capacity, data transfer rates from the media.
Topic 1 - Features
Storage Capacity
The storage capacity of the hard disk refers to the amount of disk space that can be used to store the user data.
Data Transfer Speed There are two ways to measure the speed of the disk drive
Stability
It has been measured by Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF).
Heads
Write pre-compensation
Used to adjust the smaller tracks
Spindle Motor
The motor that spins the platters is called the spindle motor.
It is used to attach Mass Storage media devices to the computer. The next generations of IDE interface is Enhanced IDE (EIDE)
Power Cable
Interface Cable
BIOS settings
The BIOS made after 1996 will support a drive larger than 4GB.
Devices use memory location for interfacing with the computer. A typical hard disk controller uses 1F0-1F7h I/O port.
DMA Channel
Without CPU interference, the DMA controller transfers data from a drive to the computers memory.
Partitioning
The hard disk drive can support separate file systems by creating a partition on a hard disk drive.
NTFS
Boot Sector
The two tasks of boot sector is to load in the operating system and to inform the user information about the disk.
Root Directory
FAT file system uses root directory to format disk.
Data Area
The content of the files are stored in data area.