Seagate OneTouch OneTouch Installation Guide Mac - Page 41
: Glossary
View all Seagate OneTouch manuals
Add to My Manuals
Save this manual to your list of manuals |
Page 41 highlights
Glossary Byte - A unit of storage on a drive that holds a single character. A byte is equal to 8 bits. Capacity - The amount of information, measured in bytes, that can be stored on a drive. Also known as storage capacity. Daisy chain - A hardware configuration in which peripheral devices are connected to each other in a series. The FireWire interface, for example, supports a daisy chain of up to 62 drives. Data Transfer Rate - The speed at which data transfers to and from the drive. External Hard Drive - A external peripheral device containing a hard drive mechanism connected to a computer via a FireWire or USB interface. FireWire - The FireWire interface is a high-performance, serial bus defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as a standard for connecting digital devices together. It is ideal for connecting computers and hard drives to digital video and audio equipment. Format - Formatting erases all information on a hard drive and sets up the file system for storing and retrieving files. On Macintosh systems, high-level formatting is often referred to as initialization. Low-level formatting sets up the locations of sectors on the drive. Your drive was formatted with the FAT32 file system at the factory. GB - (Gigabyte) Equal to 1,000,000,000 (billion) bytes. For a detailed explanation, refer to page 29. Hard Drive - An electromechanical device used for information storage and retrieval, incorporating one or more rotating disks on which data is recorded, stored, and read magnetically. Hot-Swap - This feature allows you to connect and disconnect external devices while the computer and the devices are running. External drives, such as the Maxtor Personal Storage 5000 can be hot-swapped. KB - (Kilobyte) Equal to 1,000 (thousand) bytes. MB - (Megabyte) Equal to 1,000,000 (million) bytes. Mb - (Megabit) When used to describe data storage, equal to one million bits. Mbps - (Megabits per second) When used to described data transfer rates, it refers to one million bits per second. 7 Operating System - Software that allows the user and programs installed on your system to communicate with computer hardware such as a hard drive and processor. Partition - A way to logically divide a hard drive so that an operating system treats each partition as if it were a separate hard drive. Each partition is assigned a unique drive icon. Glossary 37