Western Digital T13/2132-D Symbols and abbreviations, Conventions, Abbreviation Meaning, Overview

T13/2132-D Revision 3 June 23, 2010

3.1.22Logical Address/Geometry: A logical address or geometry is used to address a device by an application, such as DOS, using the INT 13h interface. INT 13h FN 8 returns the logical geometry of the device.

3.1.23Master Boot Record (MBR): The first LBA on a disk.

3.1.24MBR disk layout: The disk layout traditionally used by BIOS based systems.

3.1.25NV Memory: Non-Volatile memory is memory that retains content even when the power has been removed. The most common type of NV memory on a computer system is the CMOS RAM that is used to store system configuration information.

3.1.26OS: An Operating System is a software abstraction layer that provides services that give applications access to system hardware, in a hardware independent fashion. Examples of these services include memory management, multi-threaded task management, file system management, printer management, and screen management.

3.1.27PATA (Parallel ATA) device: A device implementing the parallel ATA transport (see ATA8-APT).

3.1.28POST: The Power-On Self-Test is the part of the BIOS that takes control immediately after power is applied to the computer. POST initializes the computer hardware so that an OS may be loaded.

3.1.29QWord: A sequence of eight contiguous bytes considered as a unit. See 3.3.10.

3.1.30QWord-aligned pointer: A pointer where the lowest order three bits are 000b.

3.1.31SATA (Serial ATA) device: A device implementing the serial ATA transport (see ATA8-AST).

3.1.32seg:offset: An addressing method where the address is calculated by the following formula: seg*16+offset. This calculation results in a 20 bit linear address space.

3.1.33Standard Floppy Drive: The Standard Floppy Drive is the generic term to define the currently used 5.25 inch floppy drives and the 3.5 inch floppy diskette drives found in many systems.

3.1.34Volume Boot Record (VBR): The first LBA in a bootable partition.

3.1.35word: A sequence of two contiguous bytes considered as a unit. See 3.3.10.

3.2Symbols and abbreviations

Abbreviation Meaning

*multiplied by / divided by

<less than

> greater than

GPT GUID Partition Table (see UEFI-2.3) MBR Master Boot Record (see 3.1.24)

OS Operating System (see 3.1.26)

UEFI Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (see UEFI-2.3) VBR Volume Boot Record (see 3.1.34)

3.3 Conventions

3.3.1 Overview

Lowercase is used for words having the normal English language meaning. Certain words and terms used in this standard have a specific meaning beyond the normal English language meaning. These words and terms are defined either in clause 3 or in the text where they first appear.

The names of abbreviations, commands, fields, and acronyms used as signal names are in all uppercase (e.g., IDENTIFY DEVICE). Fields containing only one bit are usually referred to as the “name” bit instead of the “name” field. (See 3.3.6 for the naming convention used for naming bits.)

6 Working Draft Enhanced Disk Drive - 4 (EDD-4)