Definition | Word |
an iIDE cable that had 40 pins but uses 80 wires, 40 of which are ground wires designed to reduce crosstalk on the cable. | 80-conductor IDE cable |
A nonprofit organization decicated to creating trade and communication standards. | ANSI (American National Standards Institute) |
An interface standard, part of IDE/ATA standards, that tape drives, CD-ROM drives, and other drives to be treated like an IDE hard drive by the system | ATAPI (Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface) |
A feature of system BIOS and hard drives that automatically identifies and configures a new drive in CMOS setup. | autodetection |
a method of data transfer between hard drive and memory that allows multiple data data transfers on a single software interrupt. | block mode |
The first sector of a floppy disk or hard drive volume; it contains information about the disk or volume. On a hard drive, if the boot record is in the active partition, then it can be used to boot the OS. Also called boot sector. | boot record |
One or more sectors that constitute the smallest unit of space on a disk for storing data (also referred to as a file allocation unit). Files are written to a disk as groups of whole clusters | cluster |
A number identifying a channel whereby a device can pass data to memory without involving the CPU. Think of a DMA channel as a shortcut for data moving to/from the device and memory. | DMA (Direct memory access) transfer mode |
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. | EIDE (Enhanced IDE) |
A standard for external drives based on SATA that uses a special external shielded SATA cable up to 2 meters long. eSATA is up to six times faster than USB or FireWire. | external SATA (eSATA) |
the 12-bit wide, one column file allocation table for floppy disk, containing information about how each cluster or file allocation unit on the disk is currently used. | FAT12 |
one or more sectors that constitute the smallest unit of space on a disk for storing data. | file allocation unit |
a drive that can hold either a 5 ¼ inch or 3 ½ floppy disk. | floppy disk drive (FDD) |
the firmware that controls access to a hard drive contained on a circuit board mounted on or inside the hard drive housing.
16. head- the top or bottom surface of one platter on a hard drive. Each platter has 2 heads. | hard drive controller |
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. | high-level formatting |
The circuit board that controls a SCSI
bus supporting as many as seven or fifteen separate
devices. The host adapter controls communication
between the SCSI bus and the PC. | host adapter |
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. See also EIDE. | IDE (Integrated Device Electroics) |
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. | Logical Unit Number (LUN) |
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. | low-level formatting |
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. | parallel ATA |
A transfer mode that uses the CPU to transfer data from the hard drive to memory. PIO mode is slower than DMA mode | PIO (Programmed Input/Output) transfer mode |
A sealed, magnetic coil device that moves across the surface of a disk either reading data from or writing data to the disk. | read/write head |
A fast interface between a host adapter and the CPU that can daisy chain as many as 7 to 15 devices on a single bus. | SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) |
A number from 0 to 15 assigned to each SCSI device attached to the daisy chain. | SCSI ID |
An ATAPI cabling method that uses a narrower and more reliable cable than the 80-conductor cable. | serial ATA (SATA) |
An IDE cable that is narrower and has fewer pins than the parallel IDE 80-conductor cable. | serial ATA cable |
The resistor added at the end of a SCSI chain to dampen the voltage at the end of the chain. | terminating resistor |
A method of storing data on a hard drive whereby the drive can have more sectors per track near the outside of the platter.. | zone bit recording |