Question

A hard disk has four surfaces (that's top and bottom of two platters). Each track has 2,048 sectors and there are 131,072 (217) tracks per surface. A block holds 512 bytes. The disk is not "zoned." What is the total capacity of this disk

Answer 1

128 GB

Step-by-step explanation:

Here, we are interested in calculating the total capacity of the disk.

From the question, we can identify the following;

Number of surfaces = 4

Tracks per surface = 131,072

Number of sectors = 2,048

Each Block size = 512 bytes

Mathematically;

Total data capacity of the disk = no of tracks * no of sectors * block size

= 131,072 * 2048 * 512 bytes

= 2^17 * 2^11 * 2^9 bytes = 2^37 bytes

1 GB = 2^30 bytes

So 2^37 = 2^7 * 2^30

= 128 GB