Section 5

Storage space

A Windows function that lets you group physical disks into storage pools and create virtual disks from the available capacity.

Just a Bunch of Disks (JBOD)

A configuration that places multiple disks in a single logical storage unit.

Directory/folder

A container in a volume that holds files or other directories. In Windows, this is also known as a folder.

Compact disc (CD)

A digital optical disc data storage format with a data capacity of 700 MB.

Optical drive

A disc drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs.

RAID

A disk sub-system that combines multiple physical disks into a single logical storage unit.

Extended File Allocation Table(exFAT)

A file system designed to support large flash drives such as USB flash drives and SD cards.

Cross-linked file

A file that claims the same cluster as another file.

Lost cluster

A file that has been deleted from the directory listing, but the file allocation table (FAT) still shows the clusters allocated to the file.

Solid-state drive (SSD)

A flash device with a large storage capacity comparable to a hard disk.

SD card

A flash memory device is often used in digital cameras.

Optical media

A flat, circular disc used to store large amounts of data.

Partition

A logical division of a storage device. Before a drive can be partitioned, it must first be initialized.

Hard disk

A long-term storage device that uses a thick magnetic disk made of several aluminum platters in a protective shell.

File system

A means for naming, organizing, and storing data on a storage device.

Mean time before failure (MTBF)

A measurement of a hardware component's reliability, typically stated in hours or thousands of hours.

Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe)

A memory storage device designed to allow access to non-volatile storage media through a PCI express (PCIe) bus.

Blu-ray disc (BD)

A newer digital optical disc storage format that is capable of greater storage capacity than DVDs.

M.2

A popular solid-state drive often used in portable computing devices.

Bad sector

A portion of the hard disk that cannot be used.

Volume

A single accessible storage area within a file system.

UEFI

A software program specification that connects firmware to the operating system. UEFI is eventually expected to replace BIOS.

Optical disc

A storage device that records binary information through pits in a reflectively-coated disc. Optical discs use lasers for reading and writing information.

Parity resiliency

A type of resiliency that writes parity information across the physical disks using bitwise arithmetic. It requires that you have at least three storage devices and provides fault tolerance against only one failure at a time.

Three-way mirror resiliency

A type of resiliency that writes to three storage devices and requires at least five storage devices. This option provides redundancy for the data if two storage devices fail at one time.

Two-way mirror resiliency

A type of resiliency that writes to two storage devices and requires at least two storage devices. This option protects you from a single storage device failure.

Disk cluster

A unit of disk space allocation for files and directories.

Spanned volume

A volume with unallocated disk space on a different disk.

Extended Volume

A volume with unallocated disk space on the same disk.

TRIM

An SSD function that configures the operating system to communicate with an SSD device and tell it the blocks of data on the device that are no longer required and can be deleted.

Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE)

An electronic interface that allows communication between a motherboard's data paths or bus and a computer's hard disks.

Mount point

An empty folder on an existing volume that points to another partition. Data saved to the folder is physically saved on the referenced partition.

External SATA (eSATA)

An extension to the SATA standard that enables SATA drives to attach externally.

Digital versatile disc (DVD)

An optical media standard that can be used to store large amounts of different types of data, such as computer data, video, and audio. Most DVD drives can read and write. Depending on the type of DVD, storage is typically somewhere between 4.7 and 9.39 GB.

Simple data provisioning

An option that adds space from the storage pool to the storage space. When you select the Simple option, all data in the storage space is lost if one of the drives fails.

Thin provisioning

An option that lets you allocate storage spaces larger than the disk space available in the pool.

Orphaned files

Files that exist on the hard drive but are not associated with a directory in the index.

BIOS

Firmware that initializes hardware at startup and provides runtime services to the operating system.

New Technology File System (NTFS)

Microsoft's default file system.

Flash memory

Non-volatile memory that is easy erase and reprogram

RAID

RAID is a data storage technology that combines multiple physical disk drives into one or more logical storage units. Using RAID can provide data redundancy, performance improvement, or both.

Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.)

S.M.A.R.T. is a monitoring system that detects drive errors. If S.M.A.R.T. detects the number of errors that indicate a complete hard disk failure is imminent, a warning is displayed during system boot.

Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA)

The latest generation of standards for hard disk and other storage devices.

Input/output operations per second (IOPS)

The measurement of the number of input/output operations that can be performed per second.

Defragmentation

The process of moving or rewriting parts of a file to contiguous sectors on the hard disk drive. Defragmentation increases the speed of data access and retrieval.