Aluminum alloy products comprising an aluminum alloy base and a sulfate-phosphate oxide zone integral therewith are disclosed. In one aspect of the invention, a polishing pad for planarizing microelectronic-device substrate assemblies has a backing member including a first surface and a second surface, a plurality of pattern elements distributed over the first surface of the backing member, and a hard cover layer over the pattern elements. A first reflector is defined at a first end of the first trench in the first semiconductor substrate. The data sectors are transferred by segmenting each sector into multiple smaller data cells and distributing these data cells among the data storage devices using an arbitrated distribution method.