A sectors is divided into smaller blocks or track

The division of a track into sectors is hard-coded on the disk surface and can be changed.

A track is divided into blocks.

The block size B is Variable for each system.

Typical block sizes range from B=512 bytes to B=4096 bytes

Whole blocks are transferred between disk and disk blocking for processing

A read-write head moves to the track that contains the block to be transferred.

Disk rotation moves the block under the read-write head for reading or writing

All of the following ingredients A physical disk block (hardware) address except one:

a disk block is time consuming because of the seek time s and rotational delay (latency) rd.

Double buffering can be used to speed up the transfer of contiguous disk blocks.

Type of records:

Records contain tracks which have values of a particular type

Variable length fields can be mixed into one record

Refers to storing a number of records in one block on the disk

There may be empty space in a block if an integral number of records do not fit in one block.

bfr refers to the number of records per disk.

Refers to records that exceed the size of one or more blocks and hence span a number of blocks.

is a sequence of records

includes information that describes the file

Blocking factor is the (average) number of file records stored in a disk block.