Glossary
Access times. The average amount of time to access an item of data.
Analog. (as opposed to digital) where digital is defined discrete items which can be reduced to zero and one bits, Analog is continuous, so on any graphic representation of Analog data there are an infinite number of points between any two points. Digital Approximates by adding data points.
Buffer. RAM Cache that is faster than the data is being delivered. Buffers are used so data may be stored and delivered to the receiving item as it is needed.
Burn a CD. Recording a
Burst transfer. The fastest a device can transfer, usually from its buffer.
Data stream. The flow of data that accomplishes a task, usually related to moving data from storage to computer RAM or between storage devices.
Digital. Discrete information that can be broken down to one or zero bits.
EIDE. Enhanced IDE supports two IDE ports unlike IDE’s single port. Commonly referred to as IDE.
Host. A device on the SCSI bus is either a host or target. The host is also known as the initiator.
kb kilobyte. Basically this means 1000 bytes, but is actually 1024 bytes.
kb/s kilobytes per second. Means of measuring throughput.
Kilobyte. See kb
Mb. Megabyte. Basically means one million bytes, but is actually 1024 kilobytes or 1024 X 1024 bytes which is 1,048,576 bytes.
Mb/s. Megabytes per second. Means of measuring throughput.
Megabyte. see Mb
Record a CD. Burn a CD, Writing a CD. Uses special
SCSI. Small Computer System Interface. A Standard used for communication on PCs.
Source hard drive. The drive which contains information that will be written somewhere else. In CD recording, the source hard drive contains the information that will be written to the CD Recorder.
Sustained transfer. The rate which data can be transferred from one device to another. This rate is an average over a longer period of time than a burst transfer rate. Because the sustained transfer test is longer, it means the testing will take into account both reading or writing from the storage device’s buffer, as well as from the media. Reading and Writing from the media is a much slower operation, so the sustained transfer test is usually a much better test for determining the usability of a device in a real application, such as recording a CD.
46 | 47 |
