| Logical Track | Physical Track (w/o ATL) | Physical Track (w/ ATL) | |---------------|--------------------------|--------------------------| | 10 | 10 (bad) | Spare Track 1 (good) | | 11 | 11 (good) | 11 (good) |
Host sees: read(10) → OK (data actually from spare track 1). The ATL buffer provides a transparent defect remapping mechanism for track-oriented storage media. While superseded by more efficient sector slipping and dynamic remapping in modern drives, it remains a foundational concept in fault-tolerant storage design and is still encountered in optical media workflows and legacy hardware maintenance. atl buffer