Storage Device Terminology
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- CD (CD-ROM)
- Compact Disk - Read Only Memory. Requires a
CD-ROM drive on the computer. Can hold up to 655 MB of data, video, etc.
- CMOS
- Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor. This is the
storage for your basic system configuration used at boot time. It describes
the hardware devices to your system. It is changed only by the "SETUP" program.
- HARD DRIVE
- A disk storage device, often very large
capacity in the gigabyte range, with a mechanism for reading and writing
to the hard disk.
- Hard Disk Controller.
- An expansion board that contains the necessary
circuitry to control and coordinate a hard disk drive. They come in
many varieties: EISA, IDE, SCSI, etc.
- IDE (Drive or Drive Interface)
- Intelligent Drive Electronics. A term that
describes a hard disk drive interface that combines features of other interfaces
and has additional features. IDE devices have their own control circuitry;
however, an IDE interface supports only devices.
- Logical Drive
- A drive letter mapped or assigned to a
directory on a remote computer's storage device. In some instances, it
may also be used to refer to partitions created in an "extended" partition
in systems such as Windows NT Server, or MS-DOS.
- Latency Time
- In disk storage devices, it is the average time
it takes for the head to spin to the read/write head so that the data can be
read or written.
- MO Disk
- Magneto-Optical disk.Uses both magnetic
fields and laser-beam optics to write data. Uses polarized laser beams to
read.
- Network Drive
- A mapped drive on a server or workstation
that can be accessed by other workstations. By sharing directories on your
workstation, in a Windows for Workgroups network, the shared directories
can be connected by "network" drive letters.
- PCMCIA
- Personal Computer Memory Card Industry Association.
First conceived in 1987, but fed on a 1984 design of a memory card. It has
evolved to cover many functions on different insertable cards. Used both
on laptops and desktop PCs.
- PROM
- Programmable Read Only Memory.
- RAID
- Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. A number (usually
3 to 7) of disks in drives which are stacked inside a single cabinet or
chassis. Data is written on multiple drives. If one of the drives fails,
it can be replaced and reconstructed from "parity" information stored on
one of the disks.
- ROM Shadowing
- This means that the BIOS code in PROM is
copied into fast RAM and all BIOS routine's addresses are remapped so programs
see the BIOS routines in RAM at their normally expected addresses. It can
double the speed of execution of BIOS code.
- SCSI
- Small Computer System Interface. An interface,
usually on a separate card, that allows you to interface with up to
7 individual devices such as hard and floppy drives, tape drives, CD-ROM
drives, etc. Has transfer rates of up to 32MBPS, but operate normally
at a much slower rates. Has its own built-in control circuitry.
- Virtual Drive
- A term used for a drive letter assigned
(mapped) to a directory on a storage device in a computer somewhere
else on the network. The virtual drive letter is another means of
changing directories, in a network, from one computer to another.
Basically the same as a logical drive or network drive.
- WORM Drive
- Write-Once Read Many (WORM) drives are optical
storage devices with quick access because they allow random access to stored
data.
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