Question | Answer |
80-conductor IDE cable | 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. |
ANSI (American National Standards Institute) | A nonprofit organization dedicated to creating trade and communications standards. |
ATAPI (Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface) | An interface standard, part of the IDE/ATA standards, that allows tape drives, CD-ROM drives, and other drives to be treated like an IDE hard drive by the system. |
autodetection | A feature of system BIOS and hard droves that automatically identifies and configures a new drive in CMOS setup. |
block mode | A method of data transfer between hard drive and memory that allows multiple data transfers on a single software interrupt. |
boot record | The first sector of a floppy disk or logical drive in a partition.; it contains information about the disk or logical drive. On a hard drive, if the boot record is in the active partition, then it is used to boot the OS. Also called boot sector. |
boot sector | The first sector of a floppy disk or logical drive in a partition.; it contains information about the disk or logical drive. On a hard drive, if the boot record is in the active partition, then it is used to boot the OS. Also called boot sector. |
cluster | 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. |
DMA transfer mode (direct memory access) | A transfer mode used by devices, including the hard drive, to transfer data to memory without involving the CPU. |
EIDE (Enhanced IDE) | A standard for managing the interface between secondary storage devices and a computer system. A system can support up to six serial ATA and parallel ATA IDE devices such as hard drives, CD-ROM drives, and DVD drives. |
external SATA (eSATA) | 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. |
FAT12 | The 12-bit wide, one-column file allocation
table for a floppy disk, containing information
about how each cluster or file allocation unit on
the disk is currently used. |
file allocation unit | 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. |
floppy disk drive (FDD) | A drive that can hold either
a 5 inch or 3 inch floppy disk. Also called floppy
drive. |
hard drive controller | The firmware that controls access to a hard drive contained on a circuit board mounted on or inside the hard drive housing. Older hard drives used firmware on a controller card that connected to the drive by way of two cables, oneeach for data and control |
head | The top or bottom surface of one platter on a hard drive. Each platter has two heads. |
high-level formatting | The process creates the boot record, file system, and root directory on the volume or logical drive and makes the volume or drive bootable). |
host adapter | The process creates the boot record, file system, and root directory on the volume or logical drive and makes the volume or drive bootable). |
IDE (Integrated Device Electronics) | 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 |
Logical Unit Number (LUN) | 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. |
low-level formatting | 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. |
operating system formatting | The process creates the boot record, file system, and root directory on the volume or logical drive and makes the volume or drive bootable). |
parallel ATA | 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. See also
serial ATA. |
PIO transfer mode (Programmed Input/Output) | A transfer
mode that uses the CPU to transfer data from the
hard drive to memory. PIO mode is slower than
DMA mode. |
read/write head | A sealed, magnetic coil device that
moves across the surface of a disk either reading
data from or writing data to the disk. |
SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) | A fast
interface between a host adapter and the CPU that
can daisy chain as many as 7 or 15 devices on a
single bus. |
SCSI ID | A number from 0 to 15 assigned to each SCSI
device attached to the daisy chain. |
serial ATA (SATA) | An ATAPI cabling method that
uses a narrower and more reliable cable than the
80-conductor cable. See also parallel ATA. |
serial ATA cable | An IDE cable that is narrower and
has fewer pins than the parallel IDE 80-conductor
cable. |
terminating resistor | The resistor added at the end of
a SCSI chain to dampen the voltage at the end of
the chain. |
zone bit recording | A method of storing data on a hard drive whereby the drive can have more sectors per track near the outside of the platter. |