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Interrupt 13 and Interrupt 13 Extensions
Interrupt 13 is the BIOS program routine for handling hard disk commands and data. The
original Interrupt 13 BIOS program supported capacities up to 8.4 gigabytes. Interrupt 13
extensions are new BIOS routines added to support drive capacities greater than 8.4
gigabytes.
Jumpers
Jumpers are small pieces of plastic with a conductive center. Jumpers connect pins on a
hard drive to set device options.
LBA (Logical Block Addressing)
Logical Block Addressing is a mode of accessing a location on a hard disk drive. LBA
sequentially numbers the sectors on a disk, eliminating the need to calculate the cylinder,
head, and sector coordinates of a data sector.
Linux
Linux is a UNIX operating system variant for the PC.
Master
Master is used in the original ATA specification for the first addressed drive (Device 0) on
an ATA/IDE channel.
Novell Netware
Netware is a Novell network operating system and file server platform. Netware has
several proprietary file systems.
OS/2
OS/2 is an IBM operating system. OS/2 supports HPFS (High Performance File
System).
Parameters
Parameters (also known as geometry) are the cylinder, head, and sector values for
defining the capacity of a hard disk drive.
Partition
A partition is a portion of a hard drive allocated to a particular file system and accessed
as a single logical volume or drive letter. To partition a drive is to allocate an area to a
drive letter or logical volume.
PIO (Programmed input/output)
PIO is a data transfer protocol using the processor to transfer the data from a hard disk
drive to memory.
Primary
Primary indicates the first ATA/IDE channel of a computer. The Primary channel controls
the first and second hard disk drives or ATA/IDE devices in a computer.
