Such as 8gbs, 16, 32 ,64 etc.
In: Technology
Hard drive storage doesn’t necessarily always come in this form. For instance, I have a storage server full of 10TB hard drives, not 8 or 16s.
However, what does happen is that a hard drive controller may be a limiting factor. These are what actually allow us to map every part of the hard drive. Since every spot on the hard drive needs an address, this is where we run into problems.
Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that we want to be able to start reading or writing from any byte on the hard drive. This means we need to address all of them. On a 256GB hard drive, this is 274877906944 different addresses. (256GB/MB * 1024MB/KB *1024KB/B * 1024B). I make my hard drive controller able to address this many specific bytes. I can use this controller for any hard drive up to 256GB in size, but not more. If I want a 300GB hard drive, I would need a controller that can do up to a 512GB hard drive. This is why you might see some drives that go up to that level to specifically.
(In practice, you actually address blocks that are a set size wide, but the logic remains true even when you do that).
Latest Answers