Maxtor 300 manual Millisecond ms One thousandth of a second .001 sec

Glossary

K

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

L

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.

LOGICAL FORMAT – The logical drive geometry that appears to an AT system BIOS as defined by the drive tables and stored in CMOS. With an installation program like Disk Manager, the drive can be redefined to any logical parameters necessary to adapt to the system drive tables.

LOOK AHEAD – The technique of buffering data into cache RAM by reading subsequent blocks in advance to anticipate the next request for data. The look ahead technique speeds up disk access of sequential blocks of data.

LOW-LEVEL FORMATTING – Formatting that creates the sectors on the platter surfaces so the operating system can access the required areas for generating the file structure. Maxtor drives are shipped with the low-level formatting already done.

LOW PROFILE – Describes drives built to the 3 1/2-inch form factor, which are only 1 inch high.

M

MB – See megabyte.

MEDIA – The magnetic film that is deposited or coated on an aluminum substrate which is very flat and in the shape of a disk. The media is overcoated with a lubricant to prevent damage to the heads or media during head take off and landing. The media is where the data is stored inside the disk in the form of magnetic flux or polarity changes.

MEGABYTE (MB) – A unit of measurement equal to 1,024 kilobytes, or 1,048,576 bytes except when referring to disk storage capacity.

1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes when referring to disk storage capacity.

See also kilobyte.

MEGAHERTZ – A measurement of frequency in millions of cycles per second.

MHz – See megahertz.

MICROPROCESSOR – The integrated circuit chip that performs the bulk of data processing and controls the operation of all of the parts of the system. A disk drive also contains a microprocessor to handle all of the internal functions of the drive and to support the embedded controller.

MICROSECOND (µs) – One millionth of a second (.000001 sec.).

MILLISECOND (ms) – One thousandth of a second (.001 sec.).

MTTF – MTTF is a basic measure of reliability for non-repairable systems. It is the mean time expected until the first failure of a piece of equipment. MTTF is a statistical value and is meant to be the mean over a long period of time and large number of units. For constant failure rate systems, MTTF is the inverse of the failure rate. If failure rate is in failures/million hours, MTTF = 1,000,000 / Failure Rate for components with exponential distributions.

Quickview 300 80/100/120/160/200/250/300GB PATA G-5