Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Actuator Arms: Attached to the actuator head at one end, the arms move the read/write
heads across the platters to read or write data.
Head Actuator: The actuator moves the actuator arms across the platters in order to
precisely align the read-write heads with a specific track and sector. The closer the
information packed on the platter, the harder it is for the actuator to align the heads
precisely. Speed of the actuator directly relates to the access speed of the hard disk.
Spindle: The component that is responsible for spinning the platters at a constant speed.
A motor is built into the spindle or mounted directly below it, which is sometimes even
visible from outside.
Read-write heads: These are attached to the ends of the actuator arms and are located on
both the top and underside of each hard disk platter. The read/write heads are positioned
at a distance of three millionths of an inch from the platters, and are responsible for
reading and writing data. The heads write the data to the platters by aligning the
magnetic fields of particles on the platter surface. Data is read by detecting the polarities
of the particles.
Logic Card: The printed circuit board at the bottom of the hard disk, the logic
card, contains a microprocessor and memory. The logic card is responsible for
controlling the hard drive including the spindle, actuator, cache memory, read-
write operations, power management and so on. It receives commands via the
hard drive’s controller that is driven by the operating system. When the computer
makes a request for information from the hard drive, the logic card processes it
and translates it into voltage fluctuations that force the actuator to move its arms
across the platters
Technical Overview
A hard drive is a mass-storage device on which data is magnetically written to and read
from rigid disk spinning at a high rate of speed.
The hard disk stores information in the form of magnetic patterns on disks called platters.
The platters are stacked vertically and mounted onto a spindle, which, driven by a special
motor, spins the platters at high speed.
Special electromagnetic read/write devices called heads are used to either record
information onto the disk or read information from it. A device called the actuator
controls the position of the heads on the surface of the disk. A logic board controls the
activity of the other components and communicates with rest of the PC with the help of
the interface and the buffer.
Read on for a brief description of some of the key parts of a regular hard disk drive:
Platters and media, read/write heads, arms and actuators, spindle motor, logic board,
interface and buffer.
Fig:
Fig
The largest unit of organization is the cylinder. A cylinder is a surface formed by the same
track number on vertically stacked disks. At any location of the head positioning arm, all
the tracks at that position compose that particular cylinder.
The rigid platter of the hard disk is greatly resistant to stress and high temperatures. This
allows it to be spun at speeds of 5,000 rpm (rotations per minute) and more. These high
rotation speeds allow faster data access times and throughput.
Access time is the amount of time it takes the drive to locate information. Throughput
(also called DTR - data transfer rate) is the amount of information the drive is capable of
transferring over a period of time.
The width of a drive is called form factor. The most common sizes for hard disks in
desktop PCs are 3.5” and 5.25”. Laptop drives are smaller, usually 2.5” in diameter or
less, with some as 1” in diameter. Height is expressed as a fraction, such as full, half, or
third height. Full-height is approximately 3 inches.
Read/Write heads
A drive’s read/write heads are similar to a VCR or tape deck’s in that they use
electromagnetic force to record and read information. They are in essence tiny
electromagnets that perform the task of converting data from electrical signals to
magnetic and back again. Each bit of data to be stored is recorded onto the hard disk
using a special encoding method that translates zeros and ones into magnetic patterns.
As the areal density of diks is increased (i.e. data bits are packed in more tightly for
greater capacity), the magnectic fields are made weaker so that they don’t interface with
each other. This puts the onus on the read/write heads to be faster and more sensitive so
they can read the weaker fields and accurately figure out which bits are ones and which
are zeroes. Heads use special amplification circuits, error detection and correction
circuitry to help them do thier job better.
There are normally two heads for each platter; one on the top surface of the disk, and
another on the bottom. Some drives, however, have an odd number of heads, as they use
only one side on one of the platters of the disk for data storage, while the other surface is
reserved for the servo platter.(Servo is discussed a little later in this article).
One characteristic that distinguishes hard disk heads to those of VCR’s or tape decks is
that they do not make contact with the media while the drive is in operation.
Over the years, two different technology families have been employed to make hard disk
read/write heads: inductive and magnetoresistive (MR). The oldest inductive head design
was that of the ferrite heads, followed by an improved version in the form of the metal-
in-gap (MIG) heads, and subsequently by thin film (TF) heads. These in turn are slowly
being replaced by MR heads.
MR technology is used for reading the disk only. For writing, a separate standard thin-
film head is used. This splitting of chores into one head for reading and another for
writing helps to optimize each head for its own function without having to compromise
for the sake of the other function.
Spindle motor:
As hard disks become more advanced, virtually every component in them is required to
do more and work harder, and the spindle motor is no exception.
The spindle motor is responsible for turning the hard disk platters, allowing the hard
drive to operate. Increasing the speed at which the platters spin means that the data can be
read off the disk faster, and it also reduces rotational latency (the time that the heads must
wait for the correct sector number to come under the head). So, there has been a push to
increase spindle motor speeds.
At one time all hard disks spun at 3,600 rpm; this is now considered out-dated. Most
consumer drives today spin at around 5200 to 5400 rpm. High end drives spin at 7200
rpm and newest ones actually go up to 15,000 rpm!
Cache:
All modern hard disks have some amount of on-board memory, which is often called a
buffer.
The purpose of this cache is not dissimilar to other caches used in the PC: to act as a
buffer between a relatively fast device and a relatively slow one. In this case, the buffer
decreases system delays due to the physical limits of the drive speed.
The buffer is a way-station for requested data after it is read from a location on the disk.
Read sequences can be sped up because of the buffer’s ability to ‘pre-fetch’ information
that is likely to be requested in the near future. There are varying levels of sophistication
in the methods buffers use to predict which data is requested.