| A | B |
|---|
| Track | A storage channel on disk or tape. On disks, they are concentric circles, on CDs they are one continuous spiral. On tapes, they are parallell tracks. |
| Sector | The smallest unit of storage read or written on a disk. |
| Cylinder | The corresponding areas on the several platters that make up the disk. |
| Inductance | A circuit or device on which a change in current generates electromotive force. |
| Head Crash | When the read/write heads bang against the platters. |
| Park | Read/Write heads move over an un used section of the disk when the computer is powered off. |
| Form Factor | The width and/or physical dimensions of the device. |
| Master | The first IDE or EIDE device on a single IDE channel. The operating system always boots from this. |
| Slave | The second IDE or EIDE device on a single IDE channel. Lower priority. |
| ATAPI | AT attachment packet interface. An extension to EIDE that provides support for CD-ROM drives and tape drives. |
| MPEG Decoder | MPEG digital video compression standards. |
| QIC | Quarter inch cartridge. The oldest backup tape drive trechnology. |
| DAT | Digital Audio ape. Newer, less expensive, and higher performance than QIC. |
| DLT | Digital Linear Tape. Newest tape drive technology. Can support up to 50 GB. |
