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 or when a hard drive is erased, and to transfer the contents of a hard drive from one computer to another.
The process of creating a disk image is called disk imagine or disk cloning. Typically, special disk imaging software is required to copy the hard drive data.
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- 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.
- disk scrubbing
Refers to a software utility used to completely wipe-out hard disk drives. This type of utility can usually overwrite single files, unused space on a disk, or a whole disk drive, using a series of algorithms to make it highly unlikely that anyone could ever retrieve the original data from the disk.
- disk striping
A technique for spreading data over multiple disk drives. Disk striping can speed up operations that retrieve data from disk storage. The computer system breaks a body of data into units and spreads these units across the available disks. Systems that implement disk striping generally allow the user to select the data unit size or […]