Glossary

FORMATTED CAPACITY – The amount of room left to store data on the disk after the required space has been used to write sector headers, boundary definitions, and timing information generated by a format operation. All Maxtor drive capacities are expressed in formatted capacity.

FORM FACTOR – The physical outer dimensions of a device as defined by industry standard. For example, most Maxtor disk drives use a 3 1/2-inch form factor.

GIGABYTE (GB) – One billion bytes (one thousand megabytes).

GUIDE RAILS – Plastic strips attached to the sides of a disk drive mounted in an IBM AT and compatible computers so that the drive easily slides into place.

HALF HEIGHT – Term used to describe a drive that occupies half the vertical space of the original full size 5 1/4-inch drive. 1.625 inches high.

HARD DISK – A type of storage medium that retains data as magnetic patterns on a rigid disk, usually made of an iron oxide or alloy over a magnesium or aluminum platter.

Because hard disks spin more rapidly than floppy disks, and the head flies closer to the disk, hard disks can transfer data faster and store more in the same volume.

HARD ERROR – A repeatable error in disk data that persists when the disk is reread, usually caused by defects in the media surface.

HEAD – The tiny electromagnetic coil and metal pole piece used to create and read back the magnetic patterns (write and read information) on the media.

HIGH-CAPACITY DRIVE – By industry conventions typically a drive of 1 gigabytes or more.

HIGH-LEVEL FORMATTING – Formatting performed by the operating system’s format program. Among other things, the formatting program creates the root directory and file allocation tables. See also low-level formatting.

HOME – Reference position track for re-calibration of the actuator, usually the outer track (track 0).

HOST ADAPTER – A plug-in board that forms the interface between a particular type of computer system bus and the disk drive.

INITIALIZE – See low level formatting.

INITIATOR – A SCSI device that requests another SCSI device to perform an operation. A common example of this is a system requesting data from a drive. The system is the initiator and the drive is the target.

INTERFACE – A hardware or software protocol, contained in the electronics of the disk controller and disk drive, that manages the exchange of data between the drive and computer.

INTERLEAVE – The arrangement of sectors on a track. A 1:1 interleave arranges the sectors so that the next sector arrives at the read/write heads just as the computer is ready to access it. See also interleave factor.

INTERLEAVE FACTOR – The number of sectors that pass beneath the read/write heads before the next numbered sector arrives. When the interleave factor is 3:1, a sector is read, two pass by, and then the next is read. It would take three revolutions of the disk to access a full track of data.

Maxtor drives have an interleave of 1:1, so a full track of data can be accessed within one revolution of the disk, thus offering the highest data throughput possible.

INTERNAL DRIVE – A drive mounted inside one of a computer’s drive bays (or a hard disk on a card, which is installed in one of the computer’s slots).

KILOBYTE (Kb) – A unit of measure consisting of 1,024 (210) bytes.

LANDING ZONE – A position inside the disk’s inner cylinder in a non data area reserved as a place to rest the heads during the time that power is off. Using this area prevents the heads from touching the surface in data areas upon power down, adding to the data integrity and reliability of the disk drive.

LATENCY – The period of time during which the read/write heads are waiting for the data to rotate into position so that it can be accessed. Based on a disk rotation speed of 3,662 rpm, the maximum latency time is 16.4 milliseconds, and the average latency time is 8.2 milliseconds.

Maxtor DiamondMax 17 80-160GB AT Hard Disk Drive

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