A+ Core 1 study notes on floppy,CD, hard disks

Memory  |  Display Adapters & Monitors   |  Floppy,CD-ROM & Hard Disk  |  CPU  |  Keyboard & Power Supply  |  Printers & Cables

Networking  |  Operating System  |  Computers  |  Motherboard  |  Security  |  Miscellaneous

Floppy, CD ROM, Hard Disk

The storage capacity of various types of floppy:

A floppy cable will have 34 wires, and the wire with red stripe signifies wire going to pin number 1 of the connector.

The floppy ribbon cable is distinguished easily from that of an IDE cable by a small twist in the cable. The purpose of the twist is to differentiate between floppy drive A and floppy drive B

Characteristics of a floppy drive:

• The ribbon cable connecting the floppy drive to the motherboard is 34 wires wide.

• There can be a maximum of two floppy drives in a PC

When you have two hard disk drives, the following two combinations are possible:

• Install the drives one each on primary and secondary controllers and designate both as Masters.

• Install both the drives on the primary controller and designate one as Master and the other as Slave.

CD-R stands for CD- Recordable. You can record data onto a CD-R only once. CD-RW stands for CD-ReWritable, and as the name suggests, you can record data any number of times onto a CD-RW (subject to wear and tear). CD-R is represented by two speeds (AxB), the former is the write speed and the latter is the read speed. The read speed is always higher than the write speed. Some typical CD-R speeds are as given below:

4X24,
8X32,
16X32 etc.

DVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc, is an optical disc storage media format. Its main uses are video and data storage.

DVDs are of the same dimensions as compact discs (CDs), but store more than six times as much data.

DVD comes in single layer (SL) or dual layer (DL). They are also distinguished as single sided (SS) or double sided (DS). There are four possible combinations:

• DVD-S (12 cm, SS/SL): 4.37 GB capacity

• DVD-9 (12 cm, SS/DL): 7.95 GB capacity

• DVD-10 (12 cm, DS/SL): 8.74GB capacity

• DVD-18 (12 cm, DS/DL): 15.90GB capacity.

Further, DVD-S stores about two hours of video, where as DVD-18 can store up to eight hours of video.

MS –DEFRAG utility: To defragment the hard disk, you can run Microsoft defragment utility by issuing a command "DEFRAG".