HARD DISK

A hard disk uses round, flat disks called platters, coated on both sides with a special media material designed to store information in the form of magnetic patterns. The platters are mounted by cutting a hole in the center and stacking them onto a spindle. The platters rotate at high speed, driven by a special spindle motor connected to the spindle. Special electromagnetic read/write devices called heads are mounted onto sliders and used to either record information onto the disk or read information from it. The sliders are mounted onto arms, all of which are mechanically connected into a single assembly and positioned over the surface of the disk by a device called an actuator. A logic board controls the activity of the other components and communicates with the rest of the Pc. Each surface of each platter on the disk can hold tens of billions of individual bits of data. Each platter has two heads, one on the top of the platter and one on the bottom, so a hard disk with three platters (normally) has six surfaces and six total heads. Each platter has its information recorded in concentric circles called tracks. Each track is further broken down into smaller pieces called sectors, each of which holds 512 bytes of information.

PHYSICAL AND LOGICAL CONSTRUCTION

Hard-disk drive consists of following key components 1. A stack of platters that forms the memory cells 2. Drive and read-write mechanism for reading from (or writing into) right location of memory disk, and 3. A controller for buffering, error control and communication with motherboard.

PLATTERS

A hard-disk platter (or disk) is a component of a hard-disk drive: it is the circular disk on which the magnetic data is stored. The rigid nature of the platters in a hard drive is what gives

them their name. Hard drives typically have several platters which are mounted on the same spindle. A platter can store information on both sides, requiring two heads per platter. All information stored on a hard disk is recorded in tracks, which are concentric circles placed on the surface of each platter, much like the annual rings of a tree. The tracks are numbered, starting from zero, starting at the outside of the platter and increasing as you go in. A track is divided into a number of Sectors. Typically a sector consists of 512 bytes of data plus a number of bytes for header. TYPES OF HARD DISKS

1. IDE

: Integrated Drive Electronics. Or PATA drive (Parallel advance technology attachment ) 2. SATA : Serial advance technology attachment 3. SCSI : Small Computer System Interface. SCSI is pronounced as scuzzy. 4. SAS : Serial Attached SCSI

IDE DRIVE IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) is a standard electronic interface used between a computer motherboard's data paths or bus and the computer's disk storage devices. The IDE interface is based on the IBM PC Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) 16-bit bus standard, but it is also used in computers that use other bus standards. Most computers sold today use an enhanced version of IDE called Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics (EIDE). IDE/PATA Drives have usually 40 pins. IDE/PATA Drives offer 133 MB/sec transfer rate. It sends 8 bit data at a time. PATA Cables are used to connect PATA HDD. Two drives can be connected in a single pata cable. One as master and other as slave. The configuration of master and slave is done by different combination of jumpers in the hdd.

SATA DRIVE Serial Advanced Technology Attachment, often abbreviated SATA or S-ATA, is a serial link - a single cable with a minimum of four wires creates a point-to-point connection between devices. As an evolution of the older Parallel ATA physical storage interface, SATA hostadapters and devices communicate via a high-speed serial cable. SATA Drives have usually 7 pins, 4 pins in pair of two for sending and receiving data and rest 3 pins are grounded. SATA Drives offers generally 300MB/sec transfer rate. It sends data bit by bit. SATA Cables are used to connect SATA HDD. Only one drive can be connected in a single sata cable.

SCSI DRIVE A Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) is an interface used to connect and transfer information between hardware. A hard drive is known as a SCSI drive when the back of the device has SCSI connectors that are cable input slots. SCSI drives offer faster data transfer speeds than it competitors ATA and IDE. Although ATA and IDE are common for desktop users, these drives do not offer as many features as SCSI which can foster the connection of multiple interfaces.

SCSI Drives have usually 50 to 68 pins. SCSI Drive offers generally 640MB/sec transfer rate. This drives are hot swappable. SCSI cables are used to connect SCSI HDD. Maximum of 16 drives can be connected in a single scsi cable. Each hdd have a 8 bytes hexadecimal code known as WWN (world wide name) for its identification in the cable.

SAS DRIVE SAS stands for Serial Attached SCSI. Basically, a SAS drive utilizes the same form factor as a SATA drive but has several high performance advantages. First of all, there's the platter speed. While typical SATA drives operate at 7200RPM, a SAS drive operates at 10K or 15K. Although the platter speed is double that of SATA, the MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) remains at the industry standard of 1.2 million hours.

SAS Drives generally offers 805 MB/sec transfer rate. This drives are hot swappable. SAS Cables are used to connect SAS Drives. Maximum of 128 drives can be connected in a single sas cable