Drive. A general word that can mean both a device for accessing information
on a disk (floppy disk drive) and a partition that can be accessed from an
operating system (logical drive).
Folder. A table in the file system that contains description of files and other
folders. Such structure allows creating folder tree that begins with the root
folder.
File. A file is named information storage in the file system. In different file
systems, files can be stored in different ways, with different file names and
different ways to write the full path to the file in the folder tree.
File system. Data structure that is necessary to store and manage files. File
system does the following functions: tracks free and occupied space,
supports folders and file names, tracks the physical positions of files on the
disk. Each partition may be formatted with its own file system.
Floppy disk drive. A device that is used to read and write information on a
diskette.
Formatting. The process of creating service structure on the disk. There are
three levels of hard disk formatting: low-level (marking the magnetic surface
with tracks and sectors), partitioning and high-level (creation of file system
on a partition).
Hard disk (hard drive). Fixed storage media along with integrated electronics
that consists of several magnetic platters that rotate synchronously on one
spindle. Hard disks have relatively high capacity and high read/write speed.
Hard disk geometry. A set of hard disk parameters that usually includes the
number of cylinders, heads and sectors per track.
Head (magnetic head, read/write head). A hard disk consists of several magnetic
platters, for each side of each platter there is a head that is used to read and
write information on it.
Hidden partition. A partition that is somehow made invisible to the operating
system. Usually partitions are hidden by changing their type.
Hypertext. A text structure that allows not only sequential browsing of each
document but also moving from one document to another with help of links
is called hypertext. Most help systems, including the Acronis OS Selector
On-Line Help, are hypertext.
Drive overlay program. Some BIOS versions have trouble supporting large
(larger than 8 gigabytes) hard disks. That is why hard disk manufacturers
provide special programs that are installed at the beginning of a disk, are
loaded before any operating systems and replace BIOS functions that are
responsible for hard disk management.
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