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Chapter 13: Problem 6

What are the components of a disk block address?

Short Answer

Expert verified
The components of a disk block address are: the cylinder number, indicating the specific cylinder on the disk, the track (or surface) number, indicating the circular path on the surface of the disk where data is stored, and the sector (or block) number, indicating the specific sector within a track where data is stored.

Step by step solution

01

Block Identification

Every block on the disk is typically identified by a unique address that consists of three elements. These are: the cylinder number, the track number (also referred to as the surface number) and finally the block number (also called the sector number). Each one of these three components represents different physical locations on the disk.
02

Cylinder Number

The first component of a disk block address is the cylinder number. This represents the specific cylinder where the block is located on a hard disk, which is essentially a stack of tracks. The number of cylinders corresponds to the width of the disk.
03

Track or Surface Number

The second component is the track or surface number. The track number represents a circular path on one surface of the disk where the data is stored. Each surface has the same number of tracks, and these are used in combination with the cylinder number to identify where on the disk the data is located.
04

Block or Sector Number

The final component of the disk block address is the block or sector number. This component indicates the specific sector in a track where the data is stored. The sectors are the smallest addressable unit on a disk, each typically holds a fixed amount of data such as 512 bytes or 4K bytes.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

Suppose we have a sequential (ordered) file of 100,000 records where each record is 240 bytes. Assume that \(B=2400\) bytes, \(s=16 \mathrm{ms}, r d=8.3 \mathrm{ms},\) and \(b t t=0.8 \mathrm{ms}\) Suppose we want to make \(X\) independent random record reads from the file. We could make \(X\) random block reads or we could perform one exhaustive read of the entire file looking for those \(X\) records. The question is to decide when it would be more efficient to perform one exhaustive read of the entire file than to perform \(x\) individual random reads. That is, what is the value for \(X\) when an exhaustive read of the file is more efficient than random \(X\) reads? Develop this as a function of \(X\)

Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using (a) an unordered file, (b) an ordered file, and (c) a static hash file with buckets and chaining. Which operations can be performed efficiently on each of these organizations, and which operations are expensive?

What are the techniques used to improve performance of disks in RAID?

Write pseudocode for the insertion algorithms for linear hashing and for extendible hashing.

Discuss the techniques for allowing a hash file to expand and shrink dynamically. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
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