The primary computer storage device. Like tape, it is magnetically recorded and can be re-recorded over and over. Disks are rotating platters with a mechanical arm that moves a read/write head between the outer and inner edges of the platter's surface. It can take as long as one second to find a location on a floppy disk to as little as a couple of milliseconds on a fast hard disk. See hard disk for more details.
Tracks and Spots
The disk surface is divided into concentric tracks (circles within circles). The thinner the tracks, the more storage. The data bits are recorded as tiny magnetic spots on the tracks. The smaller the spot, the more bits per inch and the greater the storage.
Sectors
Tracks are further divided into sectors, which hold a block of data that is read or written at one time; for example, READ SECTOR 782, WRITE SECTOR 5448. In order to update the disk, one or more sectors are read into the computer, changed and written back to disk. The operating system figures out how to fit data into these fixed spaces.
Modern disks have more sectors in the outer tracks than the inner ones because the outer radius of the platter is greater than the inner radius (see CAV). See magnetic tape and optical disc.
Tracks are concentric circles on the disk, broken up into storage units called "sectors." The sector, which is typically 512 bytes, is the smallest unit that can be read or written.
Magnetic Disk Summary
The following magnetic disk technologies are summarized below. Several have been discontinued, but are often still used long after their official demise. Media tend to be made for many years thereafter.
DISCONTINUED TECHNOLOGIES
This RAID II prototype in 1992, which embodies principles of high performance and fault tolerance, was designed and built by University of Berkeley graduate students. Housing 36 320MB disk drives, its total storage was less than the disk drive in the cheapest PC only six years later. (Image courtesy of The Computer History Museum, www.computerhistory.org) See
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