Hard disk drive

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Hard Disk Drive

A hard disk drive with the metal cover

removed.

Date September 13, 1956

Invented:

Invented By: An IBM team led by

Rey Johnson

Connects to:

• Host adapter (on PCs often

integrated into motherboard) via
one of
o PATA (IDE) interface
o SATA interface
o SAS interface
o SCSI interface (popular on
servers)

o FC interface (almost
exclusively found on servers)
Market Segments:

• Desktop
• Mobile
• Enterprise
 • Consumer

• Other/Miscellaneous

A hard disk drive (HDD), commonly referred to as a hard drive, hard disk, or fixed
disk drive,[1] is a non-volatile storage device which stores digitally encoded data on
rapidly rotating platters with magnetic surfaces. Strictly speaking, "drive" refers to
a device distinct from its medium, such as a tape drive and its tape, or a floppy disk
drive and its floppy disk. Early HDDs had removable media; however, an HDD
today is typically a sealed unit (except for a filtered vent hole to equalize air
pressure) with fixed media.[2]

An HDD is a rigid-disk drive although it is probably never referred to as such. By

way of comparison, a so-called "floppy" drive (more formally, a diskette drive) has
a disc that is flexible. Originally, the term "hard" was temporary slang, substituting
"hard" for "rigid", before these drives had an established and universally-agreed-
upon name. Some time ago, IBM's internal company term for a HDD was
"file".[citation needed]

HDDs (introduced in 1956 as data storage for an IBM accounting computer[3]) were
originally developed for use with general purpose computers; see History of hard
disk drives.

In the 21st century, applications for HDDs have expanded to include digital video
recorders, digital audio players, personal digital assistants, digital cameras and
video game consoles. In 2005 the first mobile phones to include HDDs were
introduced by Samsung and Nokia.[4] The need for large-scale, reliable storage,
independent of a particular device, led to the introduction of configurations such as
RAID arrays, network attached storage (NAS) systems and storage area network
(SAN) systems that provide efficient and reliable access to large volumes of data.
Note that although not immediately recognizable as a computer, all the
aforementioned applications are actually embedded computing devices of some sort.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Technology
o 1.1 Architecture
• 2 Capacity and access speed
o 2.1 Capacity measurements
• 3 Form factors
• 4 Other characteristics
• 5 Access and interfaces
o 5.1 Disk interface families used in personal computers
 • 6 Integrity
o 6.1 Landing zones and load/unload technology
o 6.2 Disk failures and their metrics
• 7 Manufacturers
• 8 See also
• 9 Notes and References

• 10 External links

[edit] Technology

HDDs record data by magnetizing ferromagnetic material directionally, to represent

either a 0 or a 1 binary digit. They read the data back by detecting the
magnetization of the material. A typical HDD design consists of a spindle which
holds one or more flat circular disks called platters, onto which the data are
recorded. The platters are made from a non-magnetic material, usually aluminum
alloy or glass, and are coated with a thin layer of magnetic material. Older disks
used iron(III) oxide as the magnetic material, but current disks use a cobalt-based
alloy.[citation needed]

A cross section of the magnetic surface in action. In this case the binary data is
encoded using frequency modulation.
The platters are spun at very high speeds (details follow). Information is written to a
platter as it rotates past devices called read-and-write heads that operate very close
(tens of nanometers in new drives) over the magnetic surface. The read-and-write
head is used to detect and modify the magnetization of the material immediately
under it. There is one head for each magnetic platter surface on the spindle,
mounted on a common arm. An actuator arm (or access arm) moves the heads on an
arc (roughly radially) across the platters as they spin, allowing each head to access
almost the entire surface of the platter as it spins. The arm is moved using a voice
coil actuator or (in older designs) a stepper motor. Stepper motors were outside the
head-disk chamber, and preceded voice-coil drives. The latter, for a while, had a
structure similar to that of a loudspeaker; the coil and heads moved in a straight
line, along a radius of the platters. The present-day structure differs in several
respects from that of the earlier voice-coil drives, but the same interaction between
the coil and magnetic field still applies, and the term is still used.

Older drives read the data on the platter by sensing the rate of change of the
magnetism in the head; these heads had small coils, and worked (in principle) much
like magnetic-tape playback heads, although not in contact with the recording
surface. As data density increased, read heads using magnetoresistance (MR) came
into use; the electrical resistance of the head changed according to the strength of
the magnetism from the platter. Later development made use of spintronics; in these
heads, the magnetoresistive effect was much greater that in earlier types, and was
dubbed "giant" magnetoresistance (GMR). This refers to the degree of effect, not
the physical size, of the head — the heads themselves are extremely tiny, and are too
small to be seen without a microscope. GMR read heads are now commonplace. [citation
needed]

HD heads are kept from contacting the platter surface by the air that is extremely
close to the platter; that air moves at, or close to, the platter speed.[citation needed] The
record and playback head are mounted on a block called a slider, and the surface
next to the platter is shaped to keep it just barely out of contact. It's a type of air
bearing.

The magnetic surface of each platter is conceptually divided into many small sub-
micrometre-sized magnetic regions, each of which is used to encode a single binary
unit of information. In today's HDDs, each of these magnetic regions is composed of
a few hundred magnetic grains. Each magnetic region forms a magnetic dipole
which generates a highly localized magnetic field nearby. The write head magnetizes
a region by generating a strong local magnetic field. Early HDDs used an
electromagnet both to generate this field and to read the data by using
electromagnetic induction. Later versions of inductive heads included metal in Gap
(MIG) heads and thin film heads. In today's heads, the read and write elements are
separate, but in close proximity, on the head portion of an actuator arm. The read
element is typically magneto-resistive while the write element is typically thin-film
inductive.[5]

In modern drives, the small size of the magnetic regions creates the danger that
their magnetic state might be lost because of thermal effects. To counter this, the
platters are coated with two parallel magnetic layers, separated by a 3-atom-thick
layer of the non-magnetic element ruthenium, and the two layers are magnetized in
opposite orientation, thus reinforcing each other.[6] Another technology used to
overcome thermal effects to allow greater recording densities is perpendicular
recording, first shipped in 2005[7], as of 2007 the technology was used in many
HDDs[8][9][10].

See File System for how operating systems access data on HDDs and other storage
devices.

[edit] Architecture

A hard disk drive with the platters and spindle motor hub removed showing the
copper colored motor coils surrounding a bearing at the center of the spindle motor.

The motor has an external rotor; the stator windings are copper-colored. The
spindle bearing is in the center. To the left of center is the actuator with a read-write
head under the tip of its very end (near center); the orange stripe along the side of
the arm, a thin printed-circuit cable, connects the read-write head to the hub of the
actuator. The flexible, somewhat 'U'-shaped, ribbon cable barely visible below and
to the left of the actuator arm is the flexible section, one end on the hub, that
continues the connection from the head to the controller board on the opposite side.

The head support arm is very light, but also rigid; in modern drives, acceleration at
the head reaches 250 gs.

The silver-colored structure at the upper left is the top plate of the permanent-
magnet and moving coil "motor" that swings the heads to the desired position.
Beneath this plate is the moving coil, attached to the actuator hub, and beneath that
is a thin neodymium-iron-boron (NIB) high-flux magnet. That magnet is mounted
on the bottom plate of the "motor".

The coil, itself, is shaped rather like an arrowhead, and made of doubly-coated
copper magnet wire. The inner layer is insulation, and the outer is thermoplastic,
which bonds the coil together after it's wound on a form, making it self-supporting.
Much of the coil, sides of the arrowhead, which points to the actuator bearing
center, interacts with the magnetic field to develop a tangential force to rotate the
actuator. Considering that current flows (at a given time) radially outward along
one side of the arrowhead, and radially inward on the other, the surface of the
magnet is half N pole, half S pole; the dividing line is midway, and radial.

[edit] Capacity and access speed

PC hard disk drive capacity (in GB). The vertical axis is logarithmic, so the fit line
corresponds to exponential growth.
Using rigid disks and sealing the unit allows much tighter tolerances than in a
floppy disk drive. Consequently, hard disk drives can store much more data than
floppy disk drives and can access and transmit it faster. As of January 2008:

• A typical desktop HDD, might store between 120 and 500 GB of data (based
on US market data[11]), rotate at 7,200 revolutions per minute (RPM) and
have a media transfer rate of 1 Gbit/s or higher. (1 GB = 109 B; 1 Gbit/s = 109
bit/s)
• The highest capacity HDDs are 1.5 TB[12].
• The fastest “enterprise” HDDs spin at 10,000 or 15,000 rpm, and can achieve
sequential media transfer speeds above 1.6 Gbit/s.[13] and a sustained transfer
rate up to 125MBytes/second.[13] Drives running at 10,000 or 15,000 rpm use
smaller platters because of air drag and therefore generally have lower
capacity than the highest capacity desktop drives.
• Mobile, i.e., laptop HDDs, which are physically smaller than their desktop
and enterprise counterparts, tend to be slower and have less capacity. A
typical mobile HDD spins at 5,400 rpm, with 7,200 rpm models available for
a slight price premium. Because of the smaller disks, mobile HDDs generally
have lower capacity than the highest capacity desktop drives.

The exponential increases in disk space and data access speeds of HDDs have
enabled the commercial viability of consumer products that require large storage
capacities, such as digital video recorders and digital audio players.[14] In addition,
the availability of vast amounts of cheap storage has made viable a variety of web-
based services with extraordinary capacity requirements, such as free-of-charge web
search, web archiving and video sharing (Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, etc.).

The main way to decrease access time is to increase rotational speed, while the main
way to increase throughput and storage capacity is to increase areal density. A vice
president of Seagate Technology projects a future growth in disk density of 40% per
year.[15] Access times have not kept up with throughput increases, which themselves
have not kept up with growth in storage capacity.

The first 3.5" HDD marketed as able to store 1 TB was the Hitachi Deskstar
7K1000. It contains five platters at approximately 200 GB each, providing 935.5 GiB
of usable space.[16] Hitachi has since been joined by Samsung (Samsung SpinPoint
F1, which has 3 × 334 GB platters), Seagate and Western Digital in the 1 TB drive
market.[17][18]

Form factor Width Largest capacity Platters (Max)

5.25" FH 146 mm 47 GB[19] (1998) 14

5.25" HH 146 mm 19.3 GB[20] (1998) 4[21]

3.5" 102 mm 1.5 TB[12] (2008) 5

2.5" 69.9 mm 500 GB[22] (2008) 3

1.8" (PCMCIA) 54 mm 160 GB[23] (2007)

1.8" (ATA-7 LIF) 53.8 mm

1.3" 36.4 mm 40 GB[24] (2008) 1

[edit] Capacity measurements

It has been suggested that Disk Overhead be merged into this article or section.
(Discuss)

A disassembled and labeled 1997 hard drive.

Capacity of a hard disk drive is usually quoted in gigabytes and terabytes. Older
HDDs quoted their smaller capacities in megabytes, the first drives for PCs being
just 5 or 10 MB.

The capacity of an HDD can be calculated by multiplying the number of cylinders

by the number of heads by the number of sectors by the number of bytes/sector
(most commonly 512). Drives with the ATA interface and a capacity of eight
gigabytes or more behave as if they were structured into 16383 cylinders, 16 heads,
and 63 sectors, for compatibility with older operating systems. Unlike in the 1980s,
the cylinder, head, sector (C/H/S) counts reported to the CPU by a modern ATA
drive are no longer actual physical parameters since the reported numbers are
constrained by historic operating-system interfaces and with zone bit recording the
actual number of sectors varies by zone. Disks with SCSI interface address each
sector with a unique integer number; the operating system remains ignorant of their
head or cylinder count.

The old C/H/S scheme has been replaced by logical block addressing. In some cases,
to try to "force-fit" the C/H/S scheme to large-capacity drives, the number of heads
was given as 64, although no drive has anywhere near 32 platters.

Hard disk drive manufacturers specify disk capacity using the SI prefixes mega-,
giga- and tera-, and their abbreviations M, G and T. Byte is typically abbreviated B.

Most operating-system tools report capacity using the same abbreviations but
actually use binary prefixes. For instance, the prefix mega-, which normally means
106 (1,000,000), in the context of data storage can mean 220 (1,048,576), which is
nearly 5% more. Similar usage has been applied to prefixes of greater magnitude.
This results in a discrepancy between the disk manufacturer's stated capacity and
the apparent capacity of the drive when examined through most operating-system
tools. The difference becomes even more noticeable (7%) for a gigabyte. For
example, Microsoft Windows reports disk capacity both in decimal-based units to 12
or more significant digits and with binary-based units to three significant digits.
Thus a disk specified by a disk manufacturer as a 30 GB disk might have its
capacity reported by Windows 2000 both as "30,065,098,568 bytes" and "28.0 GB".
The disk manufacturer used the SI definition of "giga", 109 to arrive at 30 GB;
however, because Microsoft Windows, Mac OS and some Linux distributions use
"gigabyte" for 1,073,741,824 bytes (230 bytes), the operating system reports capacity
of the disk drive as (only) 28.0 GB.

[edit] Form factors

5¼" full height 110 MB HDD,

2½" 8.5 mm 6495 MB HDD,
US/UK pennies for comparison.
Six hard drives with 8", 5.25", 3.5", 2.5", 1.8", and 1" disks, partially disassembled
to show platters and read-write heads, with a ruler showing inches.

The earliest “form factor” hard disk drives inherited their dimensions from floppy-
disk drives (FDDs), so that either could be mounted in chassis slots, and thus the
HDD form factors became colloquially named after the corresponding FDD types.
"Form factor" compatibility continued after the 3½ in size even though floppy disk
drives with new smaller dimensions ceased to be offered.

• 8 inch: (9.5 in x 4.624 in x 14.25 in = 241.3 mm x 117.5 mm x 362 mm)

In 1979, Shugart Associates' SA1000 was the first form factor compatible
HDD, having the same dimensions and a compatible interface to the 8" FDD.
Both "full height" and "half height" (2.313 in) versions were available.
• 5.25 inch: (5.75 in x 1.63 in x 8 in = 146.1 mm x 41.4 mm x 203 mm)
This smaller form factor, first used in an HDD by Seagate in 1980, was the
same size as full height 5¼-inch diameter FDD, i.e., 3.25 inches high. This is
twice as high as commonly used today; i.e., 1.63 in = 41.4 mm (“half height”).
Most desktop models of drives for optical 120 mm disks (DVD, CD) use the
half height 5¼" dimension, but it fell out of fashion for HDDs. The Quantum
Bigfoot HDD was the last to use it in the late 1990s, with “low-profile” (~25
mm) and “ultra-low-profile” (~20 mm) high versions.
• 3.5 inch (4 in x 1 in x 5.75 in = 101.6 mm x 25.4 mm x 146 mm)
This smaller form factor, first used in an HDD by Rodime in 1984, was the
same size as the "half height" 3½ FDD, i.e., 1.63 inches high. Today has been
largely superseded by 1-inch high “slimline” or “low-profile” versions of this
form factor which is used by most desktop HDDs.
• 2.5 inch: (2.75 in x 0.374 in x 3.945 in = 69.85 mm x 9.5–15mm mm x 100
mm)
This smaller form factor was introduced by PrairieTek in 1988; there is no
corresponding FDD. It is widely used today for hard-disk drives in mobile
devices (laptops, music players, etc.) and as of 2008 replacing 3.5 inch
enterprise-class drives. Today, the dominant height of this form factor is 9.5
mm for laptop drives, but high capacity drives have a height of 12.5 mm.
Enterprise-class drives can have a height up to 15 mm.[25]
• 1.8 inch: (54 mm × 8 mm × 71 mm)
This form factor, originally introduced by Integral Peripherals in 1993, has
evolved into the ATA-7 LIF with dimensions as stated. It is increasingly used
in digital audio players and subnotebooks. An original variant exists for 2–5
 GB sized HDDs that fit directly into a PC card expansion slot. These became
popular for their use in iPods and other HDD based MP3 players.
• 1 inch: (42.8 mm × 5 mm × 36.4 mm)
This form factor was introduced in 1999 as IBM's Microdrive to fit inside a
CF Type II slot. Samsung calls the same form factor "1.3 inch" drive in its
product literature.[26]
• 0.85 inch: (24 mm × 5 mm × 32 mm)
[27]
Toshiba announced this form factor in January 2004 for use in mobile
phones and similar applications, including SD/MMC slot compatible HDDs
optimized for video storage on 4G handsets. Toshiba currently sells a 4 GB
(MK4001MTD) and 8 GB (MK8003MTD) version[4] and holds the Guinness
World Record for the smallest harddisk drive.[28]

Major manufacturers discontinued the development of new products for the 1-inch
(=1.3-inch) and 0.85-inch form factors in 2007, due to falling prices of flash
memory[29], although Samsung introduced in 2008 with the SpinPoint A1 another
1.3-inch drive.

The inch-based nickname of all these form factors usually do not indicate any actual
product dimension (which are specified in millimeters for more recent form factors),
but just roughly indicate a size relative to disk diameters, in the interest of historic
continuity.

[edit] Other characteristics

Transfer rate As of 2008, the data transfer rate at the inner zone ranges from 44.2
MB/s to 74.5 MB/s, while the transfer rate at the outer zone ranges from 74.0 MB/s
to 111.4 MB/s.[citation needed] In contrast, the first PC drives could manage only around
40 KiB/s.

Random access time (seek time) currently ranges from just under 5 ms for high-end
server drives, to 15 ms for miniature drives, with the most common desktop type
typically being around 9 ms.[citation needed] There has not been any significant
improvement in this speed for some years. Some early PC drives used a worm-gear
to move the heads, and as a result had access times as slow as 80 - 120 ms, but this
was quickly improved by voice-coil type actuation in the late 1980s, seeing access
times reduce to around 20 ms.

Power consumption has become increasingly important, not just in mobile devices
such as laptops but also in server and desktop markets. Increasing data center
machine density has led to problems delivering sufficient power to devices, and
getting rid of the waste heat subsequently produced, as well as environmental and
electrical cost concerns (see green computing). Similar issues exist for large
companies with thousands of desktop PCs. Smaller form factor drives often use less
power than larger drives. One interesting development in this area is actively
controlling the seek speed so that the head arrives at its destination only just in time
to read the sector, rather than arriving as quickly as possible and then having to
wait for the sector to come around (i.e. the rotational latency).

Audible noise (measured in dBA) is significant for certain applications, such as

PVRs digital audio recording and quiet computers. Low noise disks typically use
fluid bearings, slower rotational speeds (usually 5,400rpm) and reduce the seek
speed under load (AAM) to reduce audible clicks and crunching sounds. Drives in
smaller form factors (e.g. 2.5 inch) are often quieter than larger drives.

Shock resistance is especially important for mobile devices. Some laptops now
include a motion sensor that parks the disk heads if the machine is dropped,
hopefully before impact, to offer the greatest possible chance of survival in such an
event.

[edit] Access and interfaces

This section does not cite any references or sources. (May 2008)
Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may
be challenged and removed.

Hard disk drives are accessed over one of a number of bus types, including parallel
ATA (PATA, also called IDE or EIDE), Serial ATA (SATA), SCSI, Serial Attached
SCSI (SAS), and Fibre Channel. Bridge circuitry is sometimes used to connect hard
disk drives to buses that they cannot communicate with natively, such as IEEE 1394
and USB.

Back in the days of the ST-506 interface, the data encoding scheme was also
important. The first ST-506 disks used Modified Frequency Modulation (MFM)
encoding, and transferred data at a rate of 5 megabits per second. Later on,
controllers using 2,7 RLL (or just "RLL") encoding increased the transfer rate by
50%, to 7.5 megabits per second; this also increased disk capacity by fifty percent.

Many ST-506 interface disk drives were only specified by the manufacturer to run at
the lower MFM data rate, while other models (usually more expensive versions of
the same basic disk drive) were specified to run at the higher RLL data rate. In
some cases, a disk drive had sufficient margin to allow the MFM specified model to
run at the faster RLL data rate; however, this was often unreliable and was not
recommended. (An RLL-certified disk drive could run on a MFM controller, but
with 1/3 less data capacity and speed.)

Enhanced Small Disk Interface (ESDI) also supported multiple data rates (ESDI
disks always used 2,7 RLL, but at 10, 15 or 20 megabits per second), but this was
usually negotiated automatically by the disk drive and controller; most of the time,
however, 15 or 20 megabit ESDI disk drives weren't downward compatible (i.e. a 15
or 20 megabit disk drive wouldn't run on a 10 megabit controller). ESDI disk drives
typically also had jumpers to set the number of sectors per track and (in some cases)
sector size.

Modern hard drives present a consistent interface to the rest of the computer, no
matter what data encoding scheme is used internally. Typically a DSP in the
electronics inside the hard drive takes the raw analog voltages from the read head
and uses PRML and Reed–Solomon error correction [30] to decode the sector
boundaries and sector data, then sends that data out the standard interface. That
DSP also watches the error rate detected by error detection and correction, and
performs bad sector remapping, data collection for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and
Reporting Technology, and other internal tasks.

SCSI originally had just one speed, 5 MHz (for a maximum data rate of five
megabytes per second), but later this was increased dramatically. The SCSI bus
speed had no bearing on the disk's internal speed because of buffering between the
SCSI bus and the disk drive's internal data bus; however, many early disk drives
had very small buffers, and thus had to be reformatted to a different interleave (just
like ST-506 disks) when used on slow computers, such as early IBM PC compatibles
and early Apple Macintoshes.

ATA disks have typically had no problems with interleave or data rate, due to their
controller design, but many early models were incompatible with each other and
couldn't run in a master/slave setup (two disks on the same cable). This was mostly
remedied by the mid-1990s, when ATA's specification was standardised and the
details began to be cleaned up, but still causes problems occasionally (especially with
CD-ROM and DVD-ROM disks, and when mixing Ultra DMA and non-UDMA
devices).

Serial ATA does away with master/slave setups entirely, placing each disk on its own
channel (with its own set of I/O ports) instead.

FireWire/IEEE 1394 and USB(1.0/2.0) HDDs are external units containing generally
ATA or SCSI disks with ports on the back allowing very simple and effective
expansion and mobility. Most FireWire/IEEE 1394 models are able to daisy-chain in
order to continue adding peripherals without requiring additional ports on the
computer itself.

[edit] Disk interface families used in personal computers

Notable families of disk interfaces include:

• Historical bit serial interfaces — connected to a hard disk drive controller

with three cables, one for data, one for control and one for power. The HDD
controller provided significant functions such as serial to parallel conversion,
data separation and track formatting, and required matching to the drive in
order to assure reliability.
 o ST506 used MFM (Modified Frequency Modulation) for the data
encoding method.
o ST412 was available in either MFM or RLL (Run Length Limited)
variants.
o Enhanced Small Disk Interface (ESDI) was an interface developed by
Maxtor to allow faster communication between the PC and the disk
than MFM or RLL.

• Modern bit serial interfaces — connect to a host bus adapter (today typically
integrated into the "south bridge") with two cables, one for data/control and
one for power.
o Fibre Channel (FC), is a successor to parallel SCSI interface on
enterprise market. It is a serial protocol. In disk drives usually the
Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) connection topology is used.
FC has much broader usage than mere disk interfaces, it is the
cornerstone of storage area networks (SANs). Recently other
protocols for this field, like iSCSI and ATA over Ethernet have been
developed as well. Confusingly, drives usually use copper twisted-pair
cables for Fibre Channel, not fibre optics. The latter are traditionally
reserved for larger devices, such as servers or disk array controllers.
o Serial ATA (SATA). The SATA data cable has one data pair for
differential transmission of data to the device, and one pair for
differential receiving from the device, just like EIA-422. That requires
that data be transmitted serially. The same differential signaling
system is used in RS485, LocalTalk, USB, Firewire, and differential
SCSI.
o Serial Attached SCSI (SAS). The SAS is a new generation serial
communication protocol for devices designed to allow for much higher
speed data transfers and is compatible with SATA. SAS uses serial
communication instead of the parallel method found in traditional
SCSI devices but still uses SCSI commands.

• Word serial interfaces — connect to a host bus adapter (today typically

integrated into the "south bridge") with two cables, one for data/control and
one for power. The earliest versions of these interfaces typically had a 16 bit
parallel data transfer to/from the drive and there are 8 and 32 bit variants.
Modern versions have serial data transfer. The word nature of data transfer
makes the design of a host bus adapter significantly simpler than that of the
precursor HDD controller.
o Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE), later renamed to ATA, and then
later to PATA ("parallel ATA", to distinguish it from the new Serial
ATA). The original name reflected the innovative integration of HDD
controller with HDD itself, which was not found in earlier disks.
Moving the HDD controller from the interface card to the disk drive
helped to standardize interfaces, including reducing the cost and
complexity. The 40 pin IDE/ATA connection of PATA transfers 16 bits
 of data at a time on the data cable. The data cable was originally 40
conductor, but later higher speed requirements for data transfer to
and from the hard drive led to an "ultra DMA" mode, known as
UDMA, which required an 80 conductor variant of the same cable;
the other conductors provided the grounding necessary for enhanced
high-speed signal quality. The interface for 80 conductor only has 39
pins, the missing pin acting as a key to prevent incorrect insertion of
the connector to an incompatible socket, a common cause of disk and
controller damage.
o EIDE was an unofficial update (by Western Digital) to the original
IDE standard, with the key improvement being the use of direct
memory access (DMA) to transfer data between the disk and the
computer without the involvement of the CPU, an improvement later
adopted by the official ATA standards. By directly transferring data
between memory and disk, DMA does not require the
CPU/program/operating system to leave other tasks idle while the
data transfer occurs.
o Small Computer System Interface (SCSI), originally named SASI for
Shugart Associates System Interface, was an early competitor of
ESDI. SCSI disks were standard on servers, workstations, and Apple
Macintosh computers through the mid-90s, by which time most
models had been transitioned to IDE (and later, SATA) family disks.
Only in 2005 did the capacity of SCSI disks fall behind IDE disk
technology, though the highest-performance disks are still available in
SCSI and Fibre Channel only. The length limitations of the data cable
allows for external SCSI devices. Originally SCSI data cables used
single ended data transmission, but server class SCSI could use
differential transmission, either low voltage differential (LVD) or high
voltage differential (HVD).

Acronym or
Meaning Description
abbreviation

Shugart Associates
SASI Historical predecessor to SCSI.
System Interface

Small Computer Bus oriented that handles concurrent

SCSI
System Interface operations.

Serial Attached Improvement of SCSI, uses serial

SAS
SCSI communication instead of parallel.
ST-506 Historical Seagate interface.

Historical Seagate interface (minor

ST-412
improvement over ST-506).

Enhanced Small Historical; backwards compatible with ST-

ESDI
Disk Interface 412/506, but faster and more integrated.

Advanced Successor to ST-412/506/ESDI by integrating

ATA Technology the disk controller completely onto the device.
Attachment Incapable of concurrent operations.

Modification of ATA, uses serial communication

SATA Serial ATA
instead of parallel.

[edit] Integrity

An IBM HDD head resting on a disk platter. Since the drive is not in operation, the
head is simply pressed against the disk by the suspension.

Close-up of a hard disk head resting on a disk platter, and its suspension. A
reflection of the head and suspension are visible beneath on the mirror-like disk.
Due to the extremely close spacing between the heads and the disk surface, any
contamination of the read-write heads or platters can lead to a head crash — a
failure of the disk in which the head scrapes across the platter surface, often
grinding away the thin magnetic film and causing data loss. Head crashes can be
caused by electronic failure, a sudden power failure, physical shock, wear and tear,
corrosion, or poorly manufactured platters and heads.

The HDD's spindle system relies on air pressure inside the enclosure to support the
heads at their proper flying height while the disk rotates. An HDD requires a certain
range of air pressures in order to operate properly. The connection to the external
environment and pressure occurs through a small hole in the enclosure (about 0.5
mm in diameter), usually with a carbon filter on the inside (the breather filter, see
below). If the air pressure is too low, then there is not enough lift for the flying head,
so the head gets too close to the disk, and there is a risk of head crashes and data
loss. Specially manufactured sealed and pressurized disks are needed for reliable
high-altitude operation, above about 3,000 m (10,000 feet). Note that modern
commercial aircraft have a pressurized cabin, whose pressure altitude does not
normally exceed 2,600 m(8,500 feet) - thus, ordinary hard drives can safely be used
in flight. Modern disks include temperature sensors and adjust their operation to
the operating environment. Breather holes can be seen on all disks — they usually
have a sticker next to them, warning the user not to cover the holes. The air inside
the operating disk is constantly moving too, being swept in motion by friction with
the spinning platters. This air passes through an internal recirculation (or "recirc")
filter to remove any leftover contaminants from manufacture, any particles or
chemicals that may have somehow entered the enclosure, and any particles or
outgassing generated internally in normal operation. Very high humidity for
extended periods can corrode the heads and platters.

For giant magnetoresistive (GMR) heads in particular, a minor head crash from
contamination (that does not remove the magnetic surface of the disk) still results in
the head temporarily overheating, due to friction with the disk surface, and can
render the data unreadable for a short period until the head temperature stabilizes
(so called "thermal asperity," a problem which can partially be dealt with by proper
electronic filtering of the read signal).

The hard disk's electronics control the movement of the actuator and the rotation of
the disk, and perform reads and writes on demand from the disk controller. Modern
disk firmware is capable of scheduling reads and writes efficiently on the platter
surfaces and remapping sectors of the media which have failed.

[edit] Landing zones and load/unload technology

Microphotograph of a hard disk head. The size of the front face (which is the
"trailing face" of the slider) is about 0.3 mm × 1.0 mm. The (not visible) bottom face
of the slider is about 1.0 mm × 1.25 mm (so called "nano" size) and faces the platter.
One functional part of the head is the round, orange structure in the middle - the
lithographically defined copper coil of the write transducer. Also note the electric
connections by wires bonded to gold-plated pads.

Most HDDs prevent power interruptions from shutting the drive down with its
heads landing in the data zone by either moving the heads to a landing zone or
unloading (i.e., load/unload) the heads.

A landing zone is an area of the platter usually near its inner diameter (ID), where
no data is stored. This area is called the Contact Start/Stop (CSS) zone. Disks are
designed such that either a spring or, more recently, rotational inertia in the platters
is used to park the heads in the case of unexpected power loss. In this case, the
spindle motor temporarily acts as a generator, providing power to the actuator.

Spring tension from the head mounting constantly pushes the heads towards the
platter. While the disk is spinning, the heads are supported by an air bearing and
experience no physical contact or wear. In CSS drives the sliders carrying the head
sensors (often also just called heads) are designed to survive a number of landings
and takeoffs from the media surface, though wear and tear on these microscopic
components eventually takes its toll. Most manufacturers design the sliders to
survive 50,000 contact cycles before the chance of damage on startup rises above
50%. However, the decay rate is not linear: when a disk is younger and has had
fewer start-stop cycles, it has a better chance of surviving the next startup than an
older, higher-mileage disk (as the head literally drags along the disk's surface until
the air bearing is established). For example, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 series of
desktop hard disks are rated to 50,000 start-stop cycles, in other words no failures
attributed to the head-platter interface were seen before at least 50,000 start-stop
cycles during testing.[31]

Around 1995 IBM pioneered a technology where a landing zone on the disk is made
by a precision laser process (Laser Zone Texture = LZT) producing an array of
smooth nanometer-scale "bumps" in a landing zone, thus vastly improving stiction
and wear performance. This technology is still largely in use today (2007),
predominantly in desktop and enterprise (3.5 inch) drives. In general, CSS
technology can be prone to increased stiction (the tendency for the heads to stick to
the platter surface), e.g. as a consequence of increased humidity. Excessive stiction
can cause physical damage to the platter and slider or spindle motor.

Load/Unload technology relies on the heads being lifted off the platters into a safe
location, thus eliminating the risks of wear and stiction altogether. The first HDD
RAMAC and most early disk drives used complex mechanisms to load and unload
the heads. Modern HDDs use ramp loading, first introduced by Memorex in 1967[32],
to load/unload onto plastic "ramps" near the outer disk edge.

All HDDs today still use one of these two technologies. Each has a list of advantages
and drawbacks in terms of loss of storage area on the disk, relative difficulty of
mechanical tolerance control, cost of implementation, etc.

Addressing shock robustness, IBM also created a technology for their ThinkPad line
of laptop computers called the Active Protection System. When a sudden, sharp
movement is detected by the built-in accelerometer in the Thinkpad, internal hard
disk heads automatically unload themselves to reduce the risk of any potential data
loss or scratch defects. Apple later also utilized this technology in their PowerBook,
iBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook line, known as the Sudden Motion Sensor.
Toshiba has released similar technology in their laptops.[33]

[edit] Disk failures and their metrics

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of

Minimizing hard disk drive failure and data loss

Most major hard disk and motherboard vendors now support self-monitoring,
analysis and reporting technology (S.M.A.R.T.), which attempts to alert users to
impending failures.

However, not all failures are predictable. Normal use eventually can lead to a
breakdown in the inherently fragile device, which makes it essential for the user to
periodically back up the data onto a separate storage device. Failure to do so will
lead to the loss of data. While it may sometimes be possible to recover lost
information, it is normally an extremely costly procedure, and it is not possible to
guarantee success. A 2007 study published by Google suggested very little
correlation between failure rates and either high temperature or activity level;
however, the correlation between manufacturer/model and failure rate was
relatively strong. Google did not publish the manufacturer's names along with their
respective failure rates. [34] While several S.M.A.R.T. parameters have an impact on
failure probability, a large fraction of failed drives do not produce predictive
S.M.A.R.T. parameters.[34] S.M.A.R.T. parameters alone may not be useful for
predicting individual drive failures.[34]
A common misconception is that a colder hard drive will last longer than a hotter
hard drive. The Google study showed the reverse -- "lower temperatures are
associated with higher failure rates". Hard drives with S.M.A.R.T.-reported average
temperatures below 27 C had failure rates worse than hard drives with the highest
reported average temperature of 50 C, failure rates at least twice as high as the
optimum S.M.A.R.T.-reported temperature range of 36 C to 47 C.[34]

SCSI, SAS and FC drives are typically more expensive and are traditionally used in
servers and disk arrays, whereas inexpensive ATA and SATA drives evolved in the
home computer market and were perceived to be less reliable. This distinction is
now becoming blurred.

The mean time between failures (MTBF) of SATA drives is usually about 600,000
hours (some drives such as Western Digital Raptor have rated 1.2 million hours
MTBF), while SCSI drives are rated for upwards of 1.5 million hours.[citation needed]
However, independent research indicates that MTBF is not a reliable estimate of a
drive's longevity.[35] MTBF is conducted in laboratory environments in test
chambers and is an important metric to determine the quality of a disk drive before
it enters high volume production. Once the drive product is in production, the more
valid[citation needed] metric is annualized failure rate (AFR). AFR is the percentage of
real-world drive failures after shipping.

SAS drives are comparable to SCSI drives, with high MTBF and high[citation needed]

reliability.

Enterprise SATA drives designed and produced for enterprise markets, unlike
standard SATA drives, have reliability comparable to other enterprise class
drives.[citation needed]

Typically enterprise drives (all enterprise drives, including SCSI, SAS, enterprise
SATA and FC) experience between 0.70%-0.78% annual failure rates from the total
installed drives.[citation needed]

[edit] Manufacturers

A Western Digital 3.5 inch 250 GB SATA HDD. This drive has an optional 4-pin
Molex power connector typically used for the older ATA standard, and SATA
typically uses its own, proprietary power connector.
 See also List of defunct hard disk manufacturers

The technological resources and know-how required for modern drive development
and production mean that as of 2007, over 98% of the world's HDDs are
manufactured by just a handful of large firms: Seagate (which now owns Maxtor),
Western Digital, Samsung, and Hitachi (which owns the former disk manufacturing
division of IBM). Fujitsu continues to make mobile- and server-class disks but exited
the desktop-class market in 2001. Toshiba is a major manufacturer of 2.5-inch and
1.8-inch notebook disks. ExcelStor is a small HDD manufacturer.

Dozens of former HDD manufacturers have gone out of business, merged, or closed
their HDD divisions; as capacities and demand for products increased, profits
became hard to find, and the market underwent significant consolidation in the late
1980s and late 1990s. The first notable casualty of the business in the PC era was
Computer Memories Inc. or CMI; after an incident with faulty 20 MB AT disks in
1985,[36] CMI's reputation never recovered, and they exited the HDD business in
1987. Another notable failure was MiniScribe, who went bankrupt in 1990 after it
was found that they had engaged in accounting fraud and inflated sales numbers for
several years. Many other smaller companies (like Kalok, Microscience, LaPine,
Areal, Priam and PrairieTek) also did not survive the shakeout, and had
disappeared by 1993; Micropolis was able to hold on until 1997, and JTS, a relative
latecomer to the scene, lasted only a few years and was gone by 1999, after
attempting to manufacture HDDs in India. Their claim to fame was creating a new
3" form factor drive for use in laptops. Quantum and Integral also invested in the
3" form factor; but eventually gave up as this form factor failed to catch on. [citation
needed]
Rodime was also an important manufacturer during the 1980s, but stopped
making disks in the early 1990s amid the shakeout and now concentrates on
technology licensing; they hold a number of patents related to 3.5-inch form factor
HDDs.

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

• 1988: Tandon Corporation sold its disk manufacturing division to Western

Digital (WDC), which was then a well-known controller designer.[37]
• 1989: Seagate Technology bought Control Data's high-end disk business, as
part of CDC's exit from hardware manufacturing.
• 1990: Maxtor buys MiniScribe out of bankruptcy, making it the core of its
low-end disk division.
• 1994: Quantum bought DEC's storage division, giving it a high-end disk
range to go with its more consumer-oriented ProDrive range, as well as the
DLT tape drive range.
• 1995: Conner Peripherals, which was founded by one of Seagate
Technology's co-founders along with personnel from MiniScribe, announces
a merger with Seagate, which was completed in early 1996.
• 1996: JTS merges with Atari, allowing JTS to bring its disk range into
production. Atari was sold to Hasbro in 1998, while JTS itself went bankrupt
in 1999.
• 2000: Quantum sells its disk division to Maxtor to concentrate on tape drives
and backup equipment.
• 2003: Following the controversy over mass failures of its Deskstar 75GXP
range, HDD pioneer IBM sold the majority of its disk division to Hitachi,
who renamed it Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST).
• December 21, 2005: Seagate and Maxtor announced an agreement under
which Seagate would acquire Maxtor in an all stock transaction valued at
$1.9 billion. The acquisition was approved by the appropriate regulatory
bodies, and closed on May 19, 2006.
• 2007
o July: Western Digital (WDC) acquires Komag U.S.A, a thin-film
media manufacturer, for USD 1 Billion.[38]