Disk Memory

Tags

comp-arch

Refers to a persistent memory store such as a hard-disk or optical drive.

Disk Partitions

The disk is divided by the OS into partitions with each partition being a continuous span of blocks, each distinct from any other partition. The lowest partition is often treated as a boot partition where a kernel can be placed to be booted.

Disk Failures

Are measured using Mean-Time-To-Failure (MTTF). If the MTTF for a single disk is 30,000 hours, then the MTTF for 1000 disks is \( \frac{30000}{1000} = 30 \text{hours} \).

Warn: MTTF generally assumes that the failures between disks are independent which they often aren't.