Sony CRX100E User Guide - Page 19

Glossary Access times. The average amount of time to access an item of data. Analog. (As opposed to digital) Where digital is defined by discrete items which can be reduced to zero and one bits, Analog is continous, so in any graphic representation of analog data there are an infinite number of points between any two points. Digital approximates analog by adding data points. Buffer. RAM Cache that is faster than the data is being delivered. Buffers are used so data may be stored and delivered to the receiving item as it is needed. Burn a CD. Recording a CD-R. Because a laser is used to write a CD it is also known as burning a CD. Burst transfer. The fastest a device can transfer, usually from its buffer. CD-R drive. A drive that can write to recordable CD-R media. CD-ROM drive. A drive that can read from CD media. Data stream. The flow of data that accomplishes a task, usually related to moving data from storage to computer RAM or between storage devices. Digital. Discrete information that can be broken down to one or zero bits. kb kilobyte. Basically this means 1000 bytes, but is actually 1024 bytes. kb/s kilobytes per second. Means of measuring throughput. Kilobyte. See kb Mb. Megabyte. Basically means one million bytes, but is actually 1024 kilobytes or 1024 X 1024 bytes which is 1,048,576. Mb/s. Megabytes per second. Means of measuring throughput. Megabyte. see Mb CD-RW drive. A drive that can write to recordable CD-RW media. 30 CRX100E/X - Spressa USB User's Guide Phase Change. The capacity of a substance to change back and forth between two or more states, by acting upon it (most commonly with heat) as is done with CD-RW media. Record a CD. Burn a CD, Writing a CD. Uses special CD-Recordable discs which can be altered by the laser in a CD-R drive. Source hard drive. The drive which contains information that will be written somewhere else. In CD recording the source hard drive contains the information that will be written to the CD Recorder. Sustained transfer. The rate which data can be transferred from one device to another. This rate is an average over a longer period of time than a burst transfer rate. Because the sustained transfer test is longer it means the testing will take into account both reading or writing from the storage deviceÕs buffer, as well as from the media. Reading and Writing from the media is a much slower operation, so the sustained transfer test is usually a much better test for determining the usability of a device in a real application, such as recording a CD. USB. Universal Serial Bus. CRX100E/X - Spressa USB User's Guide 31