Disk Drive Study Guide

06/24/2001

Test Question Preparedness

<< For Disk Drives >>

You should be prepared to satisfactorily answer questions on the following items:

Capacity, TPI, Tracks, Sectors, Sectors/Track,Cluster, Skew, Index Sensor, Home, Physical Drive Assignments.

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[ Floppy-Disk Drives: ]

There were number of different 8" formats, used by various companies.

• 8" Floppy Drive
  • Single-Density
    • Single-Sided - IBM 3740                         273Kb
    • Double-Sided                                           
  • Double-Density
    • Single-Sided                                             602Kb
    • Double-Sided                                         1200Kb
  • 8" Soft-Sector vs Hard-Sector
    • (16Sector, 32Sector)
  • Double-Sided "Grandios Density"                 1673Kb     

• 5.25" Floppy Drive
  • Single-Sided
    • Single-Density                                            90Kb
    • Double-Density                                        180Kb
    • Micro                                                        413Kb
  • Double-Sided
    • Single-Density                                          180Kb
    • Double-Density                                        360Kb
    • Quad-Density                                           720Kb
    • High-Density                                           1200Kb

• 3.5" Floppy-Drive
  • Double-Sided
    • Single-Density
    • Double-Density
    • High-Density

[ Hard-Disk Drives ]                              --          Interface, Encoding, Formatting

• MFM                                    vs          RLL
• ESDI                                    vs           RLL

Recognize the cabling for the following Interfaces:

• ST506/412
• ESDI
• IDE
• SCSI
• EIDE
• SCSI-II

Identify the purpose, or meaning of the following:

• Tracks
• Cylinders
• Sectors
• Skew
• FDISK
• Defragging
• Physical Assignment
• Logical Assignment
• Lo-Level Formatting              vs          Hi-Level Formatting

[ Special Disk Drives: ]                              --          Comparisons and Advantages

• "Floptical"
• "Magneto-Optical (MO)"
• "Phase Decode (PD)"
• "WORM"
• "BOURNOULLI"