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Definition
| An IDE cable that has 40 pins but uses 80 wires, 40 of which are ground wires designed to reduce crosstalk on the cable. The cable is used by ATA/66 and higher IDE drives. |
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Term
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Definition
The primary partition on the hard drive that boots the OS.
Also called the system partition by Windows 2000/XP/Vista. |
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Term
| ANSI (American National Standards Institute) |
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Definition
| A nonprofit organization dedicated to creating trade and communications standards. |
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Term
| ATAPI (Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface) |
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Definition
| An interface standard, part of the IDE/ATA standards, that allows tape drives, optical drives, and other drives to be treated like an IDE hard drive by the system. |
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Definition
| A feature of system BIOS and hard drives that automatically identifies and configures a new drive in BIOS setup. |
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Definition
| A way to partition a hard drive, used by all versions of Windows, that stores information about the drive in a partition table at the beginning of the drive. |
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Definition
| A method of data transfer between hard drive and memory that allows multiple data transfers on a single software interrupt. |
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Term
| boot record (boot sector) |
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Definition
| The first sector of a floppy disk or hard drive volume; it contains information about the disk or volume. |
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Term
| cluster (file allocation unit) |
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Definition
| One or more sectors that constitute the smallest unit of space on a disk for storing data |
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Term
| DMA (direct memory access) transfer mode |
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Definition
| A transfer mode used by devices, including the hard drive, to transfer data to memory without involving the CPU. |
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Definition
| An exact duplicate of a hard drive stored on another media such as a group of CDs or DVDs. |
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Term
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Definition
| A standard for managing the interface between secondary storage devices and a computer system. A system can support up to four parallel ATA IDE devices such as hard drives, CD-ROM drives, and DVD drives. |
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Definition
| The only partition on a hard drive that can contain more than one logical drive. In Windows, a hard drive can have only one. |
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Definition
| A standard for external drives based on SATA that uses a special external shielded SATA cable up to 2 meters long. Is up to six times faster than USB or FireWire. |
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Term
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Definition
| A table on a hard drive or floppy disk used by the FAT file system that tracks the clusters used to contain a file. |
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Term
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Definition
| The degree to which a system can tolerate failures. |
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Term
| file allocation table (FAT) |
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Definition
| A table on a hard drive or floppy disk used by the FAT file system that tracks the clusters used to contain a file. |
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Term
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Definition
| The overall structure that an OS uses to name, store, and organize files on a disk. Examples are NTFS and FAT32. |
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Term
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Definition
| A drive that can hold either a 512 inch or 314 inch floppy disk. |
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Term
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Definition
| Preparing a hard drive volume, logical drive, or floppy disk for use by placing tracks and sectors on its surface to store information. |
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Term
| hard disk drive (HDD) (hard drive) |
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Definition
| The main secondary storage device of a PC. Two technologies are currently used by hard drives: magnetic and solid state. |
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Term
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Definition
| The top or bottom surface of one platter on a hard drive. Each platter has two. |
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Term
| high-level formatting (operating system formatting) |
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Definition
Formatting performed by the Windows Format program
(for example, FORMAT C:/S, the Windows installation program, or the Disk Management utility. The process creates the boot record, file system, and root directory on the volume or logical drive and makes the volume or drive bootable). |
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Term
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Definition
| The circuit board that controls a SCSI bus supporting as many as seven or fifteen separate devices. Controls communication between the SCSI bus and the PC. |
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Term
| hot-plugging (hot-swapping) |
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Definition
| Plugging in a device while the computer is turned on. The computer will sense the device and configure it without rebooting. In addition, the device can be unplugged without an OS error. |
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Term
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Definition
| A hard drive that uses both magnetic and SSD technologies. |
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Term
| IDE (Integrated Device Electronics) |
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Definition
| A hard drive whose disk controller is integrated into the drive, eliminating the need for a controller cable and thus increasing speed, as well as reducing price. |
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Term
| Logical Unit Number (LUN) |
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Definition
| A number assigned to a logical device (such as a tray in a CD changer) that is part of a physical SCSI device, which is assigned a SCSI ID. |
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Term
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Definition
| A portion or all of a hard drive extended partition that is treated by the operating system as though it were a physical drive. |
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Term
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Definition
| A process (usually performed at the factory) that electronically creates the hard drive tracks and sectors and tests for bad spots on the disk surface. |
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Term
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Definition
| One of two technologies used by hard drives where data is stored as magnetic spots on disks that rotate at a high speed. |
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Term
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Definition
| The term used by Windows for the RAID 1 level that duplicates data on one drive to another drive and is used for fault tolerance. |
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Term
| New Technology file system (NTFS) |
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Definition
| The file system for the Windows 2000/XP/Vista operating system. It cannot be accessed by other operating systems such as DOS or Windows Me. It provides increased reliability and security in comparison to other methods of organizing and accessing files. Vista requires that it be used for the volume on which Vista is installed. |
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Term
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Definition
| An older IDE cabling method that uses a 40-pin flat or round data cable or an 80- conductor cable and a 40-pin IDE connector. |
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Term
| PIO (Programmed Input/Output) transfer mode |
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Definition
| A transfer mode that uses the CPU to transfer data from the hard drive to memory. Slower than DMA mode. |
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Term
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Definition
| A hard disk partition that can contain only one volume. The primary partition or volume contains a file system. In Windows, a hard drive can have up to three. |
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Term
| RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks or redundant array of independent disks) |
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Definition
| Several methods of configuring multiple hard drives to store data to increase logical volume size and improve performance, or to ensure that if one hard drive fails, the data is still available from another hard drive. |
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Term
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Definition
| Using space from two or more physical disks to increase the disk space available for a single volume. Performance improves because data is written evenly across all disks. Windows calls it a striped volume. |
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Term
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Definition
| A type of drive imaging that duplicates data on one drive to another drive and is used for fault tolerance. Windows calls it a mirrored volume. |
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Term
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Definition
| A technique that stripes data across three or more drives and uses parity checking, so that if one drive fails, the other drives can re-create the data stored on the failed drive. Increase performance and provide fault tolerance. |
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Term
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Definition
| A sealed, magnetic coil device that moves across the surface of a disk either reading data from or writing data to the disk. |
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Term
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Definition
| The Vista technology that supports a hybrid hard drive. |
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Term
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Definition
| A number from 0 to 15 assigned to each SCSI device attached to the daisy chain. |
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Term
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Definition
| A card that manages the SCSI bus and serves as the gateway to the system bus. |
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Term
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Definition
| An ATAPI cabling method that uses a narrower and more reliable cable than the 80-conductor cable. |
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Term
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Definition
| An IDE cable that is narrower and has fewer pins than the parallel IDE 80-conductor cable. |
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Term
| serial attached SCSI (SAS) |
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Definition
| A SCSI standard that allows for more than 15 devices on a single SCSI chain, uses smaller, longer, round cables, and uses smaller hard drive form factors that can support larger capacities than earlier versions of SCSI. |
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Term
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Definition
| A type of dynamic volume used on a single hard drive that corresponds to a primary partition on a basic disk. |
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Term
| S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) |
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Definition
| A monitoring system for computer hard disk drives to detect and report on various indicators of reliability, in the hope of anticipating failures. |
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Term
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Definition
| An electronic device with no moving parts. A storage device that uses memory chips to store data instead of spinning disks (such as those used by magnetic hard drives and CD drives). |
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Term
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Definition
| Using a spanned volume to increase the size of a volume. |
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Term
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Definition
| A type of dynamic volume used for two or more hard drives that writes to the disks evenly rather than filling up allotted space on one and then moving on to the next. |
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Term
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Definition
| The resistor added at the end of a SCSI chain to dampen the voltage at the end of the chain. |
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Term
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Definition
| A primary partition that has been assigned a drive letter and can be formatted with a file system such as NTFS. |
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