2 Hours
The course is designed as an introduction to the design, function and operation of Hard Disk Drives (HDDs). Also covered are the types and nature of drive failures, their causes and symptoms, and the implications for data recovery. This serves as a comprehensive precursor to any HDD Data Recovery training.
It provides an overview of:
The physical components of HDDs:
- The Platter Platter construction and materials, substrate material considerations, magnetic media & deposition, lubricating and protective layers
- The Read/Write Heads Head and Actuator components, slider role and construction, head flying height and height considerations, head crashes, head parking, GMR principles, Longitudinal and Perpendicular recording, Data recording density
- Spindle Motors Platter rotation speeds, bearing construction, voice coil motor principles
- PCB PCB Role, major components, CPU, firmware, cache, motor controllers
- Interfaces and external connections Basic principles, ATA/IDE (PATA), SATA, SCSI, jumper configurations
- Other Components Chassis, Filters, O-Ring, Seals, Breather holes
Hard Drive Form Factors:
- 3.5 Inch Desktop
- 2.5 Inch Laptop/Notebook
- Dimensions
- Attributes
Other Data Storage Devices:
- Microdrives
- USB Flash Drives
- Memory Cards
- Solid State Drives
- Hybrid Drives
The arrangement of stored data:
- Physical arrangement Tracks, sectors, cylinders, addressing, translation algorithms, capacity calculations
- Overheads Head positioning, servo information, Error Detection & Correction
- Cache principles Read, write and prefetch, FIFO, wrap-around
Logical HDD architecture:
- Low & High level formatting Bad sectors, P & G Lists, Spare Sectors
- Partitioning Single and Multiple, primary, active, extended, Master Partition Tables
- Int 13H Format
- Volume Boot Sectors
- Master Boot Record
- File Systems FAT, Clusters, directory entries, File Allocation Table, FAT limitations, VFAT, long Filenames, cluster chaining, FAT 12, 16 & 32, comparisons. NTFS, HFS
Hard Disk Drive Failures
- Logical faults Corruptions, deletions, formatting, virus attack, symptoms
- Media Degradation Bad sectors, symptoms etc.
- Firmware Failure Firmware principles, modules, Service Areas, symptoms
- Electronic & Electrical Failures Component failure, burn-out, spikes and surge damage, interface damage, symptoms
- Physical & Mechanical Faults Head failures, head crashes, spindle seizure, symptoms
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