A flyability and durability dilemma in hard disk drives

A magnetic hard disk drive lubrication dilemma was demonstrated through the touch down, wearability and burnish rate tests. It was found that attempts to improve durability and flyability through changes in lubricant film thicknesses, the addition of additives, changes in lubricant molecular weight and irradiating lubricant with deep UV rays (185 nm) have been futile with loss in either flyability or durability of magnetic hard disk. Three key types of head disk interface testing methods were introduced and the results from each parameter change were shown. The touch down test was used to check the fly height of the magnetic heads. The wearability test was used to check the wear resistance of the magnetic hard disks when in contact with the magnetic heads and the burnish rate test was employed to determine the amount of wear of the magnetic heads when in contact with magnetic hard disks. These three techniques may be used for the feasibility study for any newly designed lubricant or technique to reduce the spacing between the magnetic head and magnetic disk. We demonstrate the capability of the three techniques to discriminate different process treatments. The experiments were conducted in a class 100 cleanroom.     

Investigation of wear resistance and lifetime of diamond-like carbon (DLC) coated glass disk in flying height measurement process

Flying height has been greatly reduced to less than 10 nm to achieve high-density magnetic storage. This leads to significant disk wear especially, glass disks used in flying height measurement process. This paper reports the utilization of diamond-like carbon (DLC) overcoat to increase the wear resistance and lifetime of commercial glass disks in a flying height tester. Wear resistance of the DLC coated glass disks was investigated in wear test using a triboindentor. The results showed significant wear resistance improvement of the coated disk where the wear depth reduced from 62.2 nm on an uncoated disk to 5–7 nm on 15-nm thick DLC coated disks. Furthermore, lifetime measurement of the coated disk has been performed in a flying height tester. As a result, lifetime of the coated disk has been drastically improved by more than 30 times in comparison to an uncoated disk.     

多路视频监控系统的存储调度策略

采用传统的“轮巡式”视频监控系统在多路存储情况下,存在着存储的效率低下、因硬盘空间不足改变存储路径而造成的存储“抖动”等问题。该文介绍了旨在提高多路存储效率的多磁盘存储调度算法和解决“抖动”问题的存储预分配算法及其设计思路和实现方法。实际应用表明,多磁盘存储调度算法能够很好地利用多硬盘大容量的特点,根据各个硬盘的容量和被访问的次数,将多路存储“平均”分配于多个硬盘中,充分提高存储访问的效率,并通过资源预约方式、预分配算法很好地解决了存储“抖动”问题。     

Aerodynamically induced power loss in hard disk drives

In this paper, the effects of rotational speed, form factor and enclosure conditions on power dissipation in hard disk drives are presented. The aerodynamically dissipated power losses by 3.5, 2.5 and 1 in. hard disks are experimentally measured using a vacuum chamber and compared to theoretical estimations. Experiments in open air without enclosure agree well with theoretical predictions; a 3.5-in. disk satisfies the turbulent model but 1 and 2.5-in. disks match the laminar one, which is inversely proportional to the half power of Reynolds number. Experiments using a single 3.5-in. disk in enclosure show that aerodynamic power loss is proportional to the second power of rotational speed and the fourth power of disk radius, which agrees with the laminar theory rather than turbulent one. It is also shown that the aerodynamic power loss is reduced as the axial gap and radial clearance of enclosure decrease.     

网络环境下硬盘数据的安全威胁与防护

作为计算机存储数据的主要设备，硬盘存储数据的安全性一直受到人们的关注。主要从数据完整性和机密性两个大的方面探讨了硬盘数据存在的安全威胁以及防范策略，包括磁盘阵列技术、NTFS文件系统和EFS等。     

Local heat transfer characteristics in a single rotating disk and co-rotating disks

The present study investigates convective heat/mass transfer and flow characteristics inside rotating disks. The rotating disks are simulated on the commonly used 3.5 hard disk drives (HDD). The experiments are conducted for the various hub heights of 5, 10 and 15 mm in a single rotating disk and 4, 6 and 8 mm in co-rotating disks and for the various rotating Reynolds numbers of 5.53 × 10⁴, 8.53 × 10⁴ and 1.13 × 10⁵. To accommodate the general operating conditions of HDD, the experiments are also conducted with an obstruction of rectangular cross-section in the space, which simulates a read-write head arm. A naphthalene sublimation technique is employed to determine the detailed local heat transfer coefficients on the rotating disks using the heat and mass transfer analogy. Flow field measurements are conducted using laser Doppler anemometry (LDA) and numerical calculations are performed simultaneously to analyze the flow patterns induced by disk rotation. The results of a single rotating disk show that the heat transfer on the rotating disk is enhanced considerably according to the reduction of the hub height and the increase of the rotating Reynolds number. The head arm inserted in the cavity between the rotating disk and the cover enhances uniformity of the heat/mass transfer on the disk due to the deficit of the momentum in the average flow despite the enhancement of the tangential component of fluctuation velocity. The heat/mass transfer rates on the co-rotating disks have very low values near the hub in the inner region of the solid-body rotation and increase rapidly toward the outer region. The change of heat/mass transfer for various hub heights is negligible.The authors wish to acknowledge support for this study by the Ministry of Science and Technology through their National Research Laboratory program and by the KOSEF through the Center of Information Storage Device.     

基于COG-OS框架利用SMART预测云计算平台的硬盘故障

针对云计算平台的硬盘不可靠问题,提出基于带过采样的COG(COG-OS)框架,利用硬盘自我监测分析和报告技术(SMART)日志预测故障硬盘。首先采用DBScan或K-means聚类算法将无故障硬盘样本划分成多个不相交子集;再与故障硬盘样本结合,采用少量样本合成过采样技术(SMOTE)使整体样本集趋于平衡;最后采用LIBSVM分类算法预测故障硬盘。调整参数,将COG-OS与SMOTE+支持向量机(SVM)的预测性能相比较,实验结果表明该方法具有可行性。当采用K-means方法划分无故障盘样本,并采用径向基函数(RBF)内核的LIBSVM方法预测故障盘时,COG-OS改善了SMOTE+SVM对故障硬盘的预测查全率和整体性能。     

Holographic data storage

Research into and the development of data storage devices is a race to keep up with the continuing demand for more capacity, more density, and faster readout rates. Improvements in conventional memory technologies-magnetic hard disk drives, optical disks, and semiconductor memories-have managed to keep pace with the demand for bigger, faster memories. However, there is strong evidence that these two-dimensional surface storage technologies are approaching fundamental limits. An alternative approach for next-generation memories is to store data in three dimensions. This article describes developments in holographic 3D memories, in which high density is achieved by superimposing many holograms within the same volume of recording material. Holographic storage is a promising candidate for next-generation storage. Research has demonstrated that holographic storage systems with desirable properties can be engineered. The next step is to build these systems at costs competitive with those of existing technologies and to optimize the storage media     

How to extract continuum materials properties for (lead-free) solders from tensile tests and nanoindentation experiments

Fabrication of modern microelectronic components requires miscellaneous solder materials for joining. In order to guarantee the quality of the manufacturing process and the reliability of the resulting solder joint it is necessary to know the material properties of the joining parts and of the solder materials. In particular Young’s modulus, yield stress, and the hardness are of great interest. Moreover, a complete stress-strain curve is important for a detailed material characterization and simulation of a component, e.g., by Finite Elements (FE). The miniaturization of modern electronic products with small solder joints allows only fabrication of very small-sized specimens. Because of this miniature tests are used for measuring the mechanical properties of the solders in the experimental investigations of this paper. More specifically two miniature tests are presented and discussed, a mini-uniaxial-tension-test and a nanoindenter experiment. In the tensile test the axial loading is prescribed, the corresponding extension of the specimen length is recorded, both of which determines the stress-strain- curve directly. The stress-strain curves are then mathematically analyzed by assuming a non-linear relationship between stress and strain of the Ramberg-Osgood type and fitting the corresponding parameters to the experimental data by means of an optimization routine. For a detailed analysis of very local mechanical properties nanoindentation is used, resulting primarily in load vs. indentation-depth data. According to the procedure of Pharr and Oliver this data can be used to obtain hardness and Young’s modulus but not a complete stress-strain curve, at least not directly. In order to obtain such a stress-strain-curve, the nanoindentation experiment is combined with FE and the coefficients involved in the corresponding constitutive equation for stress and strain are obtained by means of the inverse method. Finally in this paper, the stress-strain curves from nanoindentation and tensile tests are compared for two materials, namely aluminum and steel and differences are explained in terms of the locality of the measured properties.     

RAID0.5: design and implementation of a low cost disk array data protection method

RAID has long been established as an effective way to provide highly reliable as well as high-performance disk subsystems. However, reliability in RAID systems comes at the cost of extra disks. In this paper, we describe a mechanism that we have termed RAID0.5 that enables striped disks with very high data reliability but low disk cost. We take advantage of the fact that most disk systems use offline backup systems for disaster recovery. With the use of these offline backup systems, the disk system needs to only replicate data since the last backup, thus drastically reducing the storage space requirement. Though RAID0.5 has the same data loss characteristics of traditional mirroring, the lower storage space comes at the cost of lower availability. Thus, RAID0.5 is a tradeoff between lower disk cost and lower availability while still preserving very high data reliability. We present analytical reliability models and experimental results that demonstrate the enhanced reliability and performance of the proposed RAID0.5 system.     

An implementation of using remote memory to checkpoint processes

Process checkpointing is a procedure which periodically saves the process states into stable storage. Most checkpointing facilities select hard disks for archiving. However, the disk seek time is limited by the speed of the read‐write heads, thus checkpointing process into a local disk requires extensive disk bandwidth. In this paper, we propose an approach that exploits the memory on idle workstations as a faster storage for checkpointing. In our scheme, autonomous machines which submit jobs to the computation server offer their physical memory to the server for job checkpointing. Eight applications are used to measure the remote memory performance in four checkpointing policies. Experimental results show that remote memory reduces at least 34.5 per cent of the overhead for sequential checkpointing and 32.1 per cent for incremental checkpointing. Additionally, to checkpoint a running process into a remote memory requires only 60 per cent of the local disk checkpoint latency time. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interactions between nano-spacing flying head sliders and ultra-thin liquid lubricant films with non-uniform distribution in hard disk drives

This paper describes the effect of ultra-thin liquid lubricant films on air bearing dynamics and flyability of less than 10 nm spacing flying head sliders in hard disk drives. In particular, the effect of non-uniform lubricant film distributions on head/disk interface dynamics are studied. The disks with lubricant on one half of disk surface thicker than the other half were used in this study. The dynamics of sliders is monitored using acoustic emission (AE) and the interactions between the slider and disk are investigated experimentally. The disks were also examined with a scanning micro-ellipsometer before and after each test. Complicated slider responses were observed and clarified. In addition, it was found that the periodic lubricant film thickness modulations or non-uniformity caused by the slider-disk contact interactions could be observed. It is suggested that this lubricant film thickness non-uniformity will be one of the technical issues in order to achieve ultra-low head/disk contact interface of less than 10 nm.     

Pin-on-disk wear study on thin-film disks for contact recording systems

The main subjects to be solved for realizing contact recording systems are the reduction of head wear and head vibration. To reduce head wear, we investigated pin wear on various thin-film disk surfaces. We compared the effects of roughness of disk surfaces and molecular weight (MW) of lubricants. The results showed that the pin wear became larger as the lubricant MW became smaller or the disk roughness became large. In addition, we found the tape burnishing of disk surfaces was effective in pin wear reduction. From above, we developed sliding condition models on thin-film disks.     

Investigation of contact deformation and wear characteristics of discrete track recording media

The contact deformation and wear characteristics of smooth and discrete track recording (DTR) media are investigated using nano-indentation and nano-scratch testing. Plastic deformation of the land areas between adjacent grooves was found to be substantially larger than in the smooth regions of the same disk. Reciprocating wear tests showed that wear was more severe for discrete track disks than for smooth disks. To improve the tribology of DTR media, planarization of discrete track disks appears to be necessary.     

Stripped mirroring RAID architecture

Redundant arrays of independent disks (RAID) provide an efficient stable storage system for parallel access and fault tolerance. The most common fault tolerant RAID architecture is RAID-1 or RAID-5. The disadvantage of RAID-1 lies in excessive redundancy, while the write performance of RAID-5 is only 1/4 of that of RAID-0. In this paper, we propose a high performance and highly reliable disk array architecture, called stripped mirroring disk array (SMDA). It is a new solution to the small-write problem for disk array. SMDA stores the original data in two ways, one on a single disk and the other on a plurality of disks in RAID-0 by stripping. The reliability of the system is as good as RAID-1, but with a high throughput approaching that of RAID-0. Because SMDA omits the parity generation procedure when writing new data, it avoids the write performance loss often experienced in RAID-5.     

高性能动态虚拟盘阵系统结构

尽管外存储设备的容量增加很快,但是仍无法满足用户应用程序的需要;性能上,外存储设备已成为计算机系统的瓶颈;在集群环境下,将分布式的外设构成一种动态虚拟存储系统能够较好地解决这个问题。通过很好地组织数据,动态存储系统能够随用户的需求而动态扩容和收缩,并且具有高并发性和高可靠性等特点。论文从当今的应用需求出发,分析了用户存储特点及提出动态虚拟盘阵存储系统的原理,介绍了动态虚拟盘阵存储的体系结构和特性。     

A novel methodology for quantitative evaluation of scratch-induced magnetic damage in perpendicular magnetic recording disks

We proposed a methodology for determining the demagnetization effect (magnetic damage) created by scratches on the surface of the perpendicular magnetic recording disks of a hard disk drives (HDDs). Scratches, which may occur on the disk??s surface during head and disk contact, result in read and write errors on the HDD. Investigating the amount of magnetic damage is thus an important issue. In this study, the scratched area composed of scratches having a fine pitch and shallow depth were generated, and Kerr loop measurements on the normal and scratched area were conducted. Magnetic damage was then estimated from the difference of Kerr loops. By comparing the results of the proposed methodology with the results of a previous methodology using a magnetic force microscopy, it was confirmed that the proposed methodology can be used to quantitatively evaluate scratch-induced magnetic damage.     

硬盘数据恢复技术与方法探索

硬盘是计算机信息存储设备,计算机使用中由于误操作等造成数据丢失或损坏给使用者带来很多困扰。本文针对硬盘存储结构、存储原理,常用数据恢复方法做了阐述。     

Improving multimedia systems performance using constant-density recording disks

Multimedia systems store and retrieve large amounts of data which require extremely high disk bandwidth and their performance critically depends on the efficiency of disk storage. However, existing magnetic disks are designed for small amounts of data retrievals geared to traditional operations; with speed improvements mainly focused on how to reduce seek time and rotational latency. When the same mechanism is applied to multimedia systems, overheads in disk I/O can result in dramatic deterioration in system performance. In this paper, we present a mathematical model to evaluate the performance of constant-density recording disks, and use this model to analyze quantitatively the performance of multimedia data request streams. We show that high disk throughput may be achieved by suitably adjusting the relevant parameters. In addition to demonstrating quantitatively that constant-density recording disks perform significantly better than traditional disks for multimedia data storage, a novel disk-partitioning scheme which places data according to their bandwidths is presented.     

Issues in the design of a storage server for video-on-demand

We examine issues related to the design of a storage server for video-on-demand (VOD) applications. The storage medium considered is magnetic disks or arrays of disks. We investigate disk scheduling policies, buffer management policies and I/O bus protocol issues. We derive the number of sessions that can be supported from a single disk or an array of disks and determine the amount of buffering required to support a given number of users. Furthermore, we propose a scheduling mechanism for disk accesses that significantly lowers the buffer-size requirements in the case of disk arrays. The buffer size required under the proposed scheme is independent of the number of disks in the array. This property allows for striping video content over a large number of disks to achieve higher concurrency in access to a particular video object. This enables the server to satisfy hundreds of independent requests to the same video object or to hundreds of different objects while storing only one copy of each video object. The reliability implications of striping content over a large number of disks are addressed and two solutions are proposed. Finally, we examine various policies for dealing with disk thermal calibration and the placement of videos on disks and disk arrays.