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,
optical drives, and other drives to be treated like
an IDE hard drive by the system. |
Autodetection | A feature of system BIOS and hard
drives that automatically identifies and configures
a new drive in BIOS 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 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. |
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(direct money access) transfer mode | A transfer mode used by devices, including the hard
drive, to transfer data to memory without
involving the CPU. |
EIDE(Enhamced IDE) | 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. |
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 main secondary storage device of a
PC. Two technologies are currently used by hard
drives: magnetic and solid state. Also called a hard
disk drive (HDD). |
High-Level Formatting | Formatting performed by the
Windows Format program,the Windows installation
program, or the Disk Management utility. The
process creates the boot record.Also called
OS formatting or operating system formatting. |
Host Adapter | 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. |
IDE (Intergrated 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. See also EIDE. |
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 | Formatting performed by the
Windows Format program,the Windows installation
program, or the Disk Management utility. The
process creates the boot record.Also called
OS formatting or operating system formatting. |
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 (Programmed Input/Output) Transfer Mode | 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. |