disk controller
A chip and associated circuitry that is responsible for controlling a disk drive. There are different controllers for different interfaces. For example, an IDE interface requires an IDE controller and a SCSI interface requires a SCSI controller. On Macintosh computer systems, the disk controller is built into the motherboard.
A controller for a hard disk is called a hard disk controller (HDC), and a controller for a floppy disk is called a floppy disk controller (FDC).
Read Also:
- Disk Drive
A disk drive is a randomly addressable and rewritable storage device. The term can be broadly interpreted to include optical drives and in earlier times, floppy drives. However, in popular usage, it has come to relate mainly to hard disk drives (HDDs). Disk drives can either be housed internally within a computer or housed in […]
- disk image
Also called a disk clone, an exact copy of a computer��s hard drive. The copy includes all the partition information, boot sectors, the file allocation table, operating system installation and application software. Disk images are used to transfer a hard drive��s contents during a hardware upgrade, to restore a hard drive��s contents during disaster recovery […]
- disk mirroring
A technique in which data is written to two duplicate disks simultaneously. This way if one of the disk drives fails, the system can instantly switch to the other disk without any loss of data or service. Disk mirroring is used commonly in on-line database systems where it’s critical that the data be accessible at […]
- disk optimizer
A program that makes a disk more efficient. Disk optimizer us a variety of techniques, including defragmenting the disk. Fragmentation occurs naturally when a disk is used often.
- disk pack
A stack of removable hard disks encased in a metal or plastic container.