could someone explain hd cylinders, heads, and sectors to me please....?

Question

I am a computer tech but I have never learned about this.

Answer 1

Your hard drive consist of a set of "platters" that look similar to the inside of a flippy disk. Each of those platters is a cylindar. Depending on the hard drive, you may have from one to a dozen cylindars. If it has multiple cylindars, it will have multiple heads to read them.

For Windows to be able to locate a file, it has to know where on the cylindar to look for it. So it divides the round cylindars like a pie, with each pie slice being a sector. It also divides the cylindar into tracks, that go around the disk like the tracks that separate songs on old vinyl record albums. Using the track, sector and cylindar, Windows can place the read/write head on the correct part of the hard drive to be able to read the file you want.

Use to be that when you formatted/installed a hard drive, you have to tell it the number of tracks, sectors, cylindars, etc. Today, that information it prestored in the hard drive so that plug and play can automatically detect and set up the drive.

Answer 2

if u r talking abt Hard Drive den it simply the logical dividion of it for storing data in an efficent way (for retrival) Sectors are just like cutting the cake at different angles to have wedge shape pieces and collection of a particular sector area on different plates disks forms a cylinder, and finally head are basicall read write heads which floats on thses sector and cylinders

Answer 3

Hello. Both of these sites do a decent job.

http://www.tomshardware.com/1997/07/28/the_storage_guide/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk

Answer 4

Read windows help f1