What’s a disk sector?

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A disk sector is part of a hard drive used to store data; it is effectively the smallest section of information saved on a drive. In the past, this consisted of 512 bytes of data, while more recent systems have been developed to store more information. Each disk sector is part of a track, which is essentially a ring of data on a disk, and these sectors can be grouped into clusters. On these sectors the information saved for archives and computer programs is kept, together with the data for the identification and correction of errors.

To understand what a disk sector is, it is first important to know how a hard disk is designed. Inside the physical case of a hard drive, there is a disk which is also called a “platter”. This consists of a series of concentric rings and each of these rings is called a track. The hard drive’s read/write head, used to read and write data to the platter, is able to move from the outer edge of the disk to the center, and vice versa, to access each track on it.

A mathematical sector is part of a circle which can be visualized as a slice of a pie. It consists of a slice that extends from the center to the edge of the circle, with two sides to form the shape of a slice of pie. This type of mathematical sector can be applied to the circle of a hard drive, but this is not a “sector” as referred to in computer science. A disk sector is part of a particular track sliced ​​according to the shape of that slice of pie, not the entire slice or entire track.

Each disk sector contains the same amount of data on a hard drive. In the past, the industry standard value for this was 512 bytes of information. Each byte is made up of 8 bits, and one bit is a “one” or “zero,” which are the building blocks of all binary computer code. However, as data storage methods have improved, the size of a disk sector has increased to 4096 bytes or 4 Kilobytes (KB).

Groups of sectors on a disk are often used to store data that is too large to fit on one sector of the disk, called a cluster. Information is best stored on a disk as a continuous cluster on a single track, which can be read quickly and easily. This isn’t always possible, however, and so data can be written to several tracks and clusters. Such data is referred to as “fragmented”; “Defragmenting” a hard drive is a process by which this information is rearranged to group it more efficiently.

Along with the data stored in each disk sector on a hard drive, additional information is contained within them. This may include identifiers used by the system to determine where dish information is contained. There is also an error correcting code (ECC) which helps prevent corruption and maintain data integrity when errors occur.

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