First post, by videogamer555
When the read/write head processes (reads or writes) data on a harddrive, what is the order in which it actually done. Often time, disk geometry is referred to as the CHS numbers (cylinder, head, sector). Given the naming convention called "CHS", I am assuming that this naming convention is based on the actual operation of the drive. That is, it would seem that it processes every bit in a sector before moving to the next sector, then every sector on a track with the first head (top side of the disk), then every sector on the same track on the second head (the bottom side of the disk), and does this with every disk in the cylinder until it has completed reading one cylinder, and then it starts reading the next cylinder, starting with reading the first sector on the topmost track in that next cylinder.
However, that would seem to be a very inconvenient way of doing it. More logically, it would seem that after reading all of the sectors in a track, it would then move out to the next track (cylinder) on the same side of the same disk, and does that until it has read every track in the same disk surface, and then would switch to the head for reading the bottom surface of that disk, and then would do that for every disk in the harddrive. However, then the naming convention would then be HCS (head, cylinder, sector), and as we all know the naming convention is actually CHS, not HCS.
So can somebody here shed some light on the actual order of processing data on a harddrive?
