Alibaba Group Holding Limited
Method and system for facilitating low-cost high-throughput storage for accessing large-size I/O blocks in a hard disk drive

Abstract:

A system is provided to receive a first request to write data to an HDD which comprises a plurality of platters with corresponding heads, wherein a respective platter includes a plurality of tracks. The system aligns the heads at a same first position on a first track of each platter, and distributes the data as a plurality of data sectors to track sectors located at the same first position on the first track of each platter. The system then receives a second request to read the data from the HDD, and aligns the heads at a same random position on the first track of each platter. Subsequently, the system reads, during a single rotation of the platters, all data stored on the first track of each platter, stores the read data in a data buffer, and reshuffles the read data in the data buffer to obtain the requested data.