SECONDARY STORAGE

MANAGEMENT

1
 Overview
• The file management system maintains the
file system and its directories and also
keeps track of free secondary storage space.
• The I/O system provides device drivers that
actually control the transfer of data between
memory and the secondary storage devices.
• The secondary storage management system
optimizes the completion of I/O tasks by
employing algorithms to facilitate more
efficient disk usage.
2
 Disk Structure
• Disk drives are addressed as large 1-dimensional
arrays of logical blocks, where the logical block is
the smallest unit of transfer, (usually 512 bytes).
• The 1-dimensional array of logical blocks is
mapped into the sectors of the disk sequentially.
– Sector 0 is the first sector of the first track on the
outermost cylinder.
– Mapping proceeds in order through that track, then
through the rest of the tracks in that cylinder, and then
through the rest of the cylinders from outermost to
innermost.

3
• In theory, we can convert a logical block
number into a disk address (I.e. Cylinder #,
track#,sector#).
• In practice, it is difficult to perform this
translation. Disks may have defective
sectors. The no. of sectors per track is not
constant on some drives.

4
 Disk Scheduling
• The operating system is responsible for using
hardware efficiently — for the disk drives, this
means having a fast access time and disk
bandwidth.
• Access time has two major components
– Seek time is the time for the disk arm to move the heads
to the cylinder (track) containing the desired sector.
– Rotational latency is the additional time waiting for the
disk to rotate the desired sector to the disk head.
• Want to minimize seek time
• Seek time ≈ seek distance
5
• The transfer time, T to/from disk depends on the
rotation speed of the disk.
T = no. of bytes to be transferred
no. of bytes on track * rotation speed
• Disk bandwidth is the total number of bytes
transferred, divided by the total time between the
first request for service and the completion of the
last transfer.
• We can improve the access time and bandwidth by
scheduling the servicing of disk I/O request in a
good order.
6
• Read section 14.2 on pages 488 - 489 of
text to see example comparing the transfer
times for both sequential and random
access.

7
Whenever a process needs I/O to or from disk, it
issues a system call to the OS. The request
specifies the following pieces of info:
– Whether this operation is input or output
– What the disk address for the transfer is
– What the memory address for the transfer is
– What the number of bytes to be transferred is.
If the desired disk drive and controller are
available, the request can be serviced immediately.
If the driver or controller is busy, any new
requests will be placed in a queue of pending
requests for that drive. The OS chooses which
pending request to service next.
8
 Disk Scheduling (Cont.)
• Several algorithms exist to schedule the
servicing of disk I/O requests. These
include:
1. First-Come-First-Serve
2. Shortest Seek Time First
3. SCAN
4. Circular SCAN (C-SCAN)
5. LOOK

9
 FCFS

Illustration shows total head movement of 640 cylinders.
10
 Shortest Service Time First
• Selects the request with the minimum seek
time from the current head position.
• SSTF scheduling is a form of SJF
scheduling; may cause starvation of some
requests.
• Illustration shows total head movement of
236 cylinders.

11
SSTF (Cont.)

12
 SCAN
• The disk arm starts at one end of the disk,
and moves toward the other end, servicing
requests until it gets to the other end of the
disk, where the head movement is reversed
and servicing continues.
• Sometimes called the elevator algorithm.
• Illustration shows total head movement of
208 cylinders.

13
SCAN (Cont.)

14
 C-SCAN
• Provides a more uniform wait time than SCAN.
• The head moves from one end of the disk to the
other, servicing requests as it goes. When it
reaches the other end, however, it immediately
returns to the beginning of the disk, without
servicing any requests on the return trip.
• Treats the cylinders as a circular list that wraps
around from the last cylinder to the first one.

15
C-SCAN (Cont.)

16
 C-LOOK
• Version of C-SCAN
• Arm only goes as far as the last request in
each direction, then reverses direction
immediately, without first going all the way
to the end of the disk.
• That is, it looks for a request before
continuing to move in a given direction.

17
C-LOOK (Cont.)

18
19
20
 Disk Management
The OS is responsible for several other
aspects of disk management. These include:
• Disk formatting
• Booting from disk
• Bad-block recovery

21
 Disk Formatting
• Low-level formatting, or physical formatting:
Dividing a disk into sectors that the disk controller
can read and write.
• The disk is filled with a special data structure for
each sector.
• Data structure has a header, data area and trailer.
• To use a disk to store files, the operating system
still needs to record its own data structures on the
disk. It does so by:
– Partitioning the disk into one or more groups of
cylinders. Each partition can be treated as a separate
disk.
– Logical formatting or “making a file system”. 22
 Bad Block Handling
• On simple disks (e.g. with IDE controllers), bad
blocks are handled manually. E.g. in MS-DOS the
format command does a logical format of the disk
and scans the disks for bad blocks. If a bad block
is found, an entry is made in the FAT structure to
mark that block as unusable.
• If a block goes bad during normal operation, can
run chkdsk to manually search for and record bad
blocks.
23
MS-DOS Disk Layout

24
Bad Blocks. Cont.
• More sophisticated disks, such as SCSI are smarter
about bad block recovery. The bad block list is
initialized during low-level formatting at the factory
and is updated over the life of the disk.
• The controller can be configured to replace each bad
sector logically with a spare sector. A typical bad
sector management might be as follows:
– The OS tries to read logical block 87
– The controller calculates the error-correcting code (ECC)
and finds that the sector is bad. It reports this to the OS.
– When the system is rebooted, a special command tells the
SCSI controller to replace with a spare.
– Next time logical block 87 is requested, the request is
translated into the spare sector’s address by the controller.
25
 Swap-Space Management
• Swap-space — Virtual memory uses disk space as
an extension of main memory.
• Swap-space can be carved out of the normal file
system,or, more commonly, it can be in a separate
disk partition.
• Swap-space management
– 4.3BSD allocates swap space when process starts; holds
text segment (the program) and data segment.
– Kernel uses swap maps to track swap-space use.
– Solaris 2 allocates swap space only when a page is
forced out of physical memory, not when the virtual
memory page is first created.
26
 RAID
Redundant Array of Independent
(or Inexpensive) Disks
• RAID is a set of physical disk drives viewed by
the OS as a single logical drive.
• A large no. of disks operating in parallel can
improve the data transfer rate.
• Redundant info stored on multiple disks thereby
increasing reliability.
• Data is distributed across multiple disks.
• RAID is arranged into seven different levels (0
thru 6).
27
RAID (cont)
• Several improvements in disk-use
techniques involve the use of multiple disks
working cooperatively.
• Redundancy can be implemented either by:
– duplicating each disk, (i.e. mirroring or
shadowing).
– Striping: a technique which uses a group of
disks as one storage unit.

28
Mirroring
• A mirrored array consists of two or more
disk drives. Each disk stores exactly the
same data. During read, alternate blocks of
data are read from different drives, then
combined to reassemble the original data.
The access time for a multi-block read is
reduced by a factor equal to the no. of disk
drives in the array.

29
Striping
• A striped array requires a minimum of three disk
drives. One disk is reserved for error checking. A
file segment to be stored is divided into blocks,
which are then written simultaneously to different
disks. As the write operation is taking place, the
system creates a block of parity words from each
group of blocks and stores that on a reserved disk.
During read operations, the parity word is used to
check the original data for errors.
• Can have bit-level or block-level striping.

30
RAID Levels

31
 Level OF Raid
• Raid is divided into major levels. some levels are
based on mirroring that improving reliabilities but
are expensive
• some levels are based on stripping that provide
high I/O rate ,but are not reliable.
• Some level use stripping with parity bits ,a disk is
used to store an extra bit known as parity bit used
for recovering lost data by comparing parity.
• Parity is the mechanism of checking errors in the
transmitted data using parity bit.

32
 Raid Level 0
• Block –level stripping is used for storing storing
data without any duplicity of data.
• This is used when request requires huge block of
data .
• data is divided into strips and can be accessed in
parallel, which increases the performance of
I/O.IF two I/O requests arrive at the same time for
two different blocks ,they can run simultaneously
accessing blocks from different disks, this reduces
the I/O transfer rate.

33
Raid 0 (No redundancy)

strip 0 strip 1 strip 2 strip 3

strip 4 strip 5 strip 6 strip 7

strip 8 strip 9 strip 10 strip 11

strip 12 strip 13 strip 14 strip 15

34
 Raid level 1
• Based on mirroring. Redundancy is achieved by
duplicated all the data. If there are four disks,
computer has four duplicate disk also. Each strip
is mapped onto two disks.
• Read request in this level can be performed on
either of the disks. whichever involves the less
seek time. write request performs on both strips of
disks. Recovery is easier because if one disk fails,
data stored in this disk is removed from its
duplicate disk. Data Can be accessed from the
other disks fails. Cost incurred in this level is very
high bcoz it takes double space for data storgae.

35
 Raid 1 (mirrored)

strip 0 strip 1 strip 2 strip 3

strip 4 strip 5 strip 6 strip 7

strip 8 strip 9 strip 10 strip 11

strip 12 strip 13 strip 14 strip 15

strip 0 strip 1 strip 2 strip 3

strip 4 strip 5 strip 6 strip 7

strip 8 strip 9 strip 10 strip 11

strip 12 strip 13 strip 14 strip 15

36
Raid Level 2(Memory style Error Correcting Code Org
• This level have parity checking mechanism that is
special bits known as parity bits are used to
recover any lost bit in the data. A byte consists of
eight bits that are stored on eight disks, some other
disks store the error –correction bits or parity bits.
• Each byte of data is set to the parity either odd this
is equal to 1 or even is equal to 0.if a bit is lost or
damaged whole bit pattern is checked for the
present parity and reconstructed by computing it
again. Error checking scheme stores two or more
extra bits as a parity bit. This is more reliable then
the previous two and needs less disks then
previous levels. we used this level where
frequently disk error occurs.
37
 Raid 2 ()

b0 b1 b2 f0(b) f1(b) f2(b)

b2

38
 Raid level 3 bit –interleaved parity org
• This level needs only one parity bit instead of
error correcting code and work similar to 2 level
raid. Single disk is required for storing for storing
the parity bit that is used for the error correcting
code and detection.
• this parity is the computed parity from all the bits
of a byte.
• Is a damaged bit is found ,all the bits in a byte are
completed again for the parity. if the parity does
not match with the previous computed parity ,an
error is detected.
• This is less expensive then level 2.

39
• Drawback is extra over head. in term of
time taken for computing parity of every
byte. its slow in writing operations,
whenever block is updated.

40
RAID 3 (bit-interleaved parity)

b0 b1 b2 b2 P(b)

41
 Raid level 4(Block interleaved Parity
organization
• Separate blocks of data are stored on
separate disks. similar to the level 0;
• This level has also separate disk used for
the storing parity block that is computed
from the data blocks.
• If Failure of a block occurs computing
again for parity block and matching it from
the previous parity block can reconstruct it.

42
 Raid level 4(Block interleaved Parity
organization
• This level provide The high I/O transfer rate. If the
data block is large because read and write request
os performed simultaneously from different disks
in parallel.
• Every write operation need disk access 4 times.
this is 2 read and 2 write. whenever a write
requests is issued, block is updated and the parity
block is made ready. since parity is block has to be
updated every time a block is entered.
• Then the block is made ready for parity
computation and the parity block is rewritten.

43
RAID 4 (block-level parity)

block 0 block 1 block 2 block 3 P(0-3)

block 4 block 5 block 6 block 7 P(4-7)
block 8 block 9 block 10 block 11 P(8-11)
block 12 block 13 block 14 block 15 P(12-15)

44
 Raid level 5(block interleaved
distributed parity
• This level is similar to the level 4.The different
lies in using the entire available disks for storing
parity with the data. For example If an array of six
disks is present ,parity for nth block is stored in
the disk number (n mod5)+1 rest of the data is
stored on the other five disks on nth blocks.
• its store data and parity in different blocks, this is
ways to less parity and data loss if disk fails. Data
is ether recover from parity block or by computing
data blocks.
45
RAID 5 (block-level distributed
parity)

block 0 block 1 block 2 block 3 P(0-3)

block 4 block 5 block 6 P(4-7) block 7

block 8 block 9 P(8-11) block 10 block 11

block 12 P(12-15) block 13 block 14 block 15

P(16-19) block 16 block 17 block 18 block 19

46
 Raid level 6(P+Q redundancy
scheme)
• In this level instead of one parity computing ,two
computation are performed for parity and the
computed parity and the computed parity are
stored on different disks. Two extra disks are
required for this purpose. Extra disk or parity
computation is done to prevent multiple disks
failure. this ensures high reliability but an extra
overhead is incurred into the form of extra disks
and five disks access for one write command.
47
 RAID 6

block 0 block 1 block 2 block 3 P(0-3) P(0-3)

block 4 block 5 block 6 P(4-7) P(4-7) blok

block 9 7
block
block 8 P(8-11) P(8-11) block 10
11
block 12 P(12-15) P(12-15) block block block 15
13 14
P(16-19) P(16-19) block 16 block 17 block block
18 19

48
 Selecting a RAID Level
• If a disk fails, the time to rebuild its data can be
significant and will vary with the RAID level
used.
• Rebuilding is easiest for RAID level 1. Simply
copy the data from another disk.
• RAID level 0 is used in high-performance
applications where data loss is not critical.
• RAID level 1 is popular for applications that
require high reliability with fast recovery.

49
• The combination of RAID levels 0 and 1
(RAID 0 + 1) is used for applications where
performance and reliability are very
important, for e.g. databases.
• Due to RAID 1’s high space overhead,
RAID level 5 is often preferred for storing
large volumes of data.
• RAID level 6 is not supported currently by
many implementations, but should offer
better reliability than level 5.
50
 Cost of Storage
• Main memory is much more expensive than disk
storage.
• Removable media could lower the overall storage
cost.
• The cost per megabyte of hard disk storage is
competitive with magnetic tape if only one tape is
used per drive.
• The cheapest tape drives and the cheapest disk drives
have had about the same storage capacity over the
years.
• The following figures show the cost trend per
megabyte of DRAM, magnetic disks and tape drives. 51
Price per Megabyte of DRAM, From 1981
to 2000

52
Price per Megabyte of Magnetic Hard Disk,
From 1981 to 2000

53
Price per Megabyte of a Tape Drive,
From 1984-2000

54