Welcome to Disk Scheduling Algorithms

Theory as well as a simulation to explain the need for Disk Scheduling within the OS

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Disk Scheduling Algorithms

First Come First Serve (FCFS)

First Come First Serve (FCFS)

    The requests are served in the order they arrive. If the order of requests is 82, 170, 43, 140, 24, 16 and 190, and the position of Read/Write head is at 50, the movement of the head is as shown.

Advantages

Every request will get its chance and there is no indefinite postponement.

Disadvantages

Seek time (time taken by the disk arm locate the specified track to read/write data) is not optimized. Non preemptive, so the algorithm cannot be stopped in between and short processes at the back should wait for long processes to finish.

Shortest Seek Time First (SSTF)

Shortest Seek Time First (SSTF)

  • The seek times of every request are calculated first and the requests having the shortest seek time is executed first so that the requests nearer to the disk arm are executed first. THe head movement for the same example is shown.

Advantages

Lower average response time and higher throughput.

Disadvantages

Seek times need to be calculated in advance. May cause starvation if seek time for a process is high. High variance of response time. Frequent switching of head slows down the algorithm.

SCAN

SCAN

  • Disk arm moves in the direction of the first request whose position is not the same as the read/write head and services the request on the way until it reaches the end of the disk, where it reverses its direction and services requests on the way until all requests are serviced. Head movement is shown for the same example.

Advantages

High throughput, average response time with low variance.

Disadvantages

Long waiting time for request locations just visited by arm.

C-SCAN

C-SCAN

  • It is similar to SCAN except that after one direction has been scanned, the disk arm goes to the other end of the disk and services requests from there until all requests are serviced. THe figure shows the movement of the head for the same exapmle.

Advantages

More uniform wait time compared to SCAN

Disadvantages

More seek movements.

F.A.Q

Frequently Asked Questions

We will be updating the rest of the questions soon

  • Disk scheduling algorithms is a function of operating systems that schedules I/O requests arriving for the disk.

  • Since only one I/O request can be served at a time by the disk controller, it is necessary to have algorithms in order to serve the I/O requests one by one.

  • These algorithms need to ensure that the disk arm movement need to be minimal as hard drives being mechanical, are one of the slowest parts of the computer system.