Dell NM176 owner manual 173, System diskette See bootable diskette Glossary

RTC — Real-time clock.

SAS — Serial-attached SCSI.

SATA — Serial Advanced Technology Attachment. A standard interface between the system board and storage devices.

SCSI — Small computer system interface. An I/O bus interface with faster data transmission rates than standard ports.

SDRAM — Synchronous dynamic random-access memory.

sec — Second(s).

serial port — An I/O port used most often to connect a modem to your system. You can usually identify a serial port on your system by its 9-pin connector.

service tag — A bar code label on the system used to identify it when you call Dell for technical support.

simple disk volume — The volume of free space on a single dynamic, physical disk.

SMART — Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology. Allows hard drives to report errors and failures to the system BIOS and then display an error message on the screen.

SMP — Symmetric multiprocessing. Used to describe a system that has two or more processors connected via a high-bandwidth link and managed by an operating system, where each processor has equal access to I/O devices.

SNMP — Simple Network Management Protocol. A standard interface that allows a network manager to remotely monitor and manage workstations.

spanning — Spanning, or concatenating, disk volumes combines unallocated space from multiple disks into one logical volume, allowing more efficient use of all the space and all drive letters on a multiple-disk system.

striping — Disk striping writes data across three or more disks in an array, but only uses a portion of the space on each disk. The amount of space used by a "stripe" is the same on each disk used. A virtual disk may use several stripes on the same set of disks in an array. See also guarding, mirroring, and RAID.

SVGA — Super video graphics array. VGA and SVGA are video standards for video adapters with greater resolution and color display capabilities than previous standards.

system board — As the main circuit board, the system board usually contains most of your system’s integral components, such as the processor, RAM, controllers for peripherals, and various ROM chips.

system configuration information — Data stored in memory that tells a system what hardware is installed and how the system should be configured for operation.

system diskette — See bootable diskette.

Glossary

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