Glossary of Computer
Hard Drive Terms

This glossary will help you understand the terms, acronyms and definitions used to talk about the hard disk drive.

ATA Advanced Technology Attachment. The PC bus used to attach storage devices.

Backup. The process of saving a copy of your files from your hard drive so that in the event of a hard drive failure, you will be able to recover the lost data. Read more about backups.

Block. See sector.

CPU Central Processing Unit is often referred to as the Processor.

Hard Disk Drive (HDD) Also popularly known as either the Hard Disk or Hard Drive. This is by far the most popular computer data storage device. Its distinguishing characteristics are the sealed aluminum case with rotating magnetic platters. Read more about What is a Hard Drive. Also, you can read more about the Hard Disk Drive Technology.

HDD Hard Disk Drive.

IDE Integrated Drive Electronics. The prevailing hard disk drive technology used in personal computers.

OS Operating System. Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux, are all examples of an Operating System.

I/O Input/Output refers to the transfer of data with reference to the CPU. When the CPU reads from the disk, it is doing Input, and when it writes to the disk, it is doing Output.

PATA Parallel ATA.

PC Personal Computer. Originally it was used to designate the IBM/Intel family of desktop computers first introduced in the early eighties. Now, it has come to mean any small computer that is used only by one person.

PCMCIA Personal Computer Memory Card Interface Association. When this acronym was first invented, its meaning was Peripheral Component Micro Channel Interconnect Architecture. However, because of the obvious problems with this acronym, the term PC Card came to replace it and PCMCIA was retroactively renamed to its current meaning.

PC Card A credit-card sized module used to attach external devices to a laptop.

RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks. This term originally denoted a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks but that usage is no longer proper.

SAS Serial Attached SCSI.

SATA Serial ATA.

SCSI Small Computer System Interface. It is widely pronounced as "scuzzy."

Sector. The smallest unit of data that can be transferred from a hard disk drive. A sector is also known as a block. A sector contains exactly 512 bytes. A byte is a used to hold characters such as a letter of the english alphabet.

USB Universal Serial Bus. The most popular method for connecting external devices to the PC.

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