HDD: Up close and personal

The hard disk plays a significant role in the functioning of every computer you sell. The
speed at which the PC boots up and the rate at which programs load is directly related to
the hard disk speed. The hard disk’s performance is also critical when the user is
multitasking or processing large amounts of data such as graphics work, editing sound and
video, or working with databases.
A bigger hard disk makes it possible for your customers to store more programs and data.
A faster disk enables them to load software more efficiently. A reliable disk minimizes the
chances of your customer losing data, and your chances of losing a customer.
It is difficult to really understand the factors that affect performance, reliability and
interfacing without knowing how the drive works internally. So let’s take a look at the
components that make up modern hard disk drive, and how they work together to read
and write data.

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:

Platters and media

The platter is the part of the dive that actually holds the data. Each platter is composed of
two main materials: a substrate material that forms the platter and gives it structure and
rigidity, and a magnetic media coating which actually holds the magnetic impulses that
represent the data.
The most commonly used substrate material is aluminium, but many drive makers are
starting to use alternatives such as glass, glass composites, and magnesium alloys in the
quest for a faster disk..
Platters are recognised into specific structures to enable the systematic storage and
retrieval of data. The billions of individual bits of data on a platter are recorded in
concentric circles called tracks. Each track is further broken down into smaller pieces
called sectors, each of which usually holds 512 bytes of information.

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.
Actuator and arms:
The read/write heads of the hard drive are mounted onto arms that allow them to be
moved from the outer tracks and back again. The arms are contrlled using a device called
the actuator that positions the arms to the appropriate track on the disk.
There is one arm per read/write head, and all of them are lined up and mounted to the
head actuator. This means that when the actuator moves, all of the heads move together in
a synchronized fashion. Heads cannot be individually sent to different track numbers.
The actuator is very important part of the hard disk because changing from track to track
is the only operation on the hard disk that requires physical movement.
Most older hard drives, especially inexpensive ones, used stepper motor actuators.
However, today’s drives use voice coil actuators, which are much faster and more reliable.
Head positioning in a voice-coil actuator is provided by a feedback system known as the
servo. Servo information is pre-recorded position reference data that is located on a disk.
The drive uses this information and compares it against the actual head position, then
makes corrections as necessary to place the head at the correct track. The servo codes are
stored in special areas on the disk that not accessible for user data.
Servo information can be stored in either of these two ways: dedicated servo, where one
side of one platter is used to hold the servo information; or embedded servo, where the
information is spread out over the surface of all the platters. The later is more commonly
used today. The servo information is recorded on the disk at the time of manufacture and
is never normally changed over the life of the drive.

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!

Logic board and control circuitry:

Early hard disks were ‘dumb’ meaning that virtually all of the control logic for controlling
the hard disk itself was placed into an intermediary adapter called the controller, which
was plugged into the PC. In contrast, modern hard disks are made with an intelligent
circuit board integrated into the hard disk unit.
The drive’s internal logic board contains a microprocessor and internal memory, and other
structures and circuits that control what happens inside the drive. In many ways, this is
like a small embedded PC within the hard disk itself. The logic board performs several
important functionc such as controlling the spindle motor and the actuator and managing
read/write operations.
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.