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Glossary
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 PROFILE – Describes drives built to the 3
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 – A basic measure of reliability for
Maxtor QuickView 400/500GB Serial ATA Hard Disk Drive |