TPI

Tracks Per Inch. A measure of the density with which data can be stored on a diskette.

Track

A circular region on a diskette, which is divided into sectors. Each side of a 1.44MB or 720KB diskette has 80 concentric tracks. Each side of a 360KB 5 ‘/.+-inch diskette has 40. On a hard disk, tracks are called cylinders.

Utility program

A type of application program designed to perform housekeeping chores, such as copying files, creating directories, and so on. HELP and MENU are examples of utility programs.

Volume label

A name (up to eleven characters in length) you can assign to a diskette or hard disk. To add or change a volume label for a diskette or hard disk that has already been formatted, use the MS-DOS LABEL command.

Wildcard character

A character that represents an unknown character or group of characters. MS-DOS recognizes two wildcard characters: * and

?.The asterisk represents a group of characters, and the question mark represents a single character.

Write

To record data on a disk.

Write-protect

To prevent a diskette from being overwritten. When a diskette is write-protected, you cannot erase, change, or record over its contents.

20Glossary