magnetic disk images

Tracks and Sectors

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

The Early 1990s

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 RAID.

More magnetic disk images

Learn more about magnetic disk