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Glossary
G-4 Maxtor QuickView 400/500GB Serial ATA Hard Disk Drive
that retains data as magnetic patterns on a
rigid disk, usually made of an iron oxide or
alloy over a magnesium or aluminum platter.
Because hard disks spin more rapidly than
floppy disks, and the head flies closer to the
disk, hard disks can transfer data faster and
store more in the same volume.
HARD ERROR – A repeatable error in disk
data that persists when the disk is reread,
usually caused by defects in the media
surface.
HEAD – The tiny electromagnetic coil and
metal pole piece used to create and read back
the magnetic patterns (write and read
information) on the media.
HIGH-CAPACITY DRIVE – By industry
conventions typically a drive of 1 gigabytes
or more.
HIGH-LEVEL FORMATTING –
Formatting performed by the operating
system’s format program. Among other
things, the formatting program creates the
root directory and file allocation tables. See
also low-level formatting.
HOME – Reference position track for
re-calibration of the actuator, usually the
outer track (track 0).
HOST ADAPTER – A plug-in board that
forms the interface between a particular type
of computer system bus and the disk drive.
I
INITIALIZE – See low level formatting.
INITIATOR – A SCSI device that requests
another SCSI device to perform an operation.
A common example of this is a system
requesting data from a drive. The system is
the initiator and the drive is the target.
INTERFACE – A hardware or software
protocol, contained in the electronics of the
disk controller and disk drive, that manages
the exchange of data between the drive and
computer.
INTERLEAVE – The arrangement of
sectors on a track. A 1:1 interleave arranges
the sectors so that the next sector arrives at
the read/write heads just as the computer is
ready to access it. See also interleave factor.
INTERLEAVE FACTOR – The number of
sectors that pass beneath the read/write heads
before the next numbered sector arrives.
When the interleave factor is 3:1, a sector is
read, two pass by, and then the next is read. It
would take three revolutions of the disk to
access a full track of data. Maxtor drives have
an interleave of 1:1, so a full track of data can
be accessed within one revolution of the disk,
thus offering the highest data throughput
possible.
INTERNAL DRIVE – A drive mounted
inside one of a computer’s drive bays (or a
hard disk on a card, which is installed in one
of the computer’s slots).
K
KILOBYTE (Kb) – A unit of measure
consisting of 1,024 (2
10
) bytes.
L
LANDING ZONE – A position inside the
disk’s inner cylinder in a non data area
reserved as a place to rest the heads during the
time that power is off. Using this area
prevents the heads from touching the surface
in data areas upon power down, adding to the
data integrity and reliability of the disk drive.
LATENCY – The period of time during
which the read/write heads are waiting for the
data to rotate into position so that it can be
accessed. Based on a disk rotation speed of
3,662 rpm, the maximum latency time is 16.4
milliseconds, and the average latency time is
8.2 milliseconds.
LOGICAL FORMAT – The logical drive
geometry that appears to an AT system BIOS
as defined by the drive tables and stored in