Obtaining timely and accurate information about the low-level characteristics of disk drives presents a problem for system design and implementation alike. This paper presents a collection of three disk microbenchmarks which combine to empirically extract a relevant subset of disk geometry and performance parameters in an efficient and accurate manner, without requiring a priori information of the drive being measured. Novel among the benchmarks is the utilization of linearly increased stride to glean a spectrum of low-level details including head-switch and cylinder-switch times while factoring out rotational effects. A bandwidth benchmark extracts the zone profile of disks, revealing that the previously preferred linear model of zone bandwidth is less accurate than a quadratic model. A seek profile is also generated, completing a trio of benchmarks. Data is collected from a broad class of modern disks, including five SCSI, two IDE, and two simulated drives.
Title
Microbenchmark-based Extraction of Local and Global Disk Characteristics
Published
1905-06-21
Full Collection Name
Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences Technical Reports
Other Identifiers
CSD-99-1063
Type
Text
Extent
26 p
Archive
The Engineering Library
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