Index:

The standards

• The ATA standard
• The ATAPI standard
• Enhanced IDE (EIDE)

The hardware:

• Host adapters
  • Local-bus
  • ISA
• Physical parts of a harddisk
  • The logic-board
    • Firmware
  • The HDA (Head Disk Assembly)
    • The actuator
    • The platter
  • About cylinders, tracks, heads and sectors

Addressing sectors

• About cylinders, tracks, heads and sectors
• Translation of physical to logical parameters
  • Zone Bit Recording ZBR
  • Method 1: CHS & XCHS
  • Method 2: LBA

Transferring data

• Method 1: PIO
  • IORDY
• Method 2: DMA
  • Single word DMA
  • Multi-word DMA
  • Bus master DMA
  • Ultra DMA

Speeding up transfers

• About data transfer speeds
• Cache
• Look-ahead
• Read/Write-multiple

Other harddisk related items

• ECC, guarding the data integrity
• Green modes, a way to save power
• Magnetic coding, MFM and RLL

Other items

• BIOS
• CMOS setup
• Device
• Driver
• Flash-memory
• Interrupt
• I/O
• IRQ
• (EE)PROM