Glossary of Terms

Cluster

A cluster is a logical unit of storage (one or more sectors) on a hard or floppy drive. Its size is managed by the operating system and varies from 512 bytes to 256k bytes, depending on the particular file system and the partition size.

File System

A file system consists of files, directories, and the information needed to locate and access these items. File systems are generally specific to the type of computer you have. Most IBM-compatible personal computers use the File Allocation Table file system in one form or another.

File Allocation Table FAT

A File Allocation Table (FAT) is a table that an operating system maintains on a hard disk that provides a map of the cluster (the basic unit of logical storage on a hard disk) that a file has been stored in.

Partition

A formatted section of your hard drive. Drives formatted by DOS or Windows have at least one partition, labeled C:. Large drives can be formatted to have multiple partitions. Each partition will then behave as if it were a separate physical drive, with its own letter (D, E, F, etc.).

Sector

The smallest storage allocation units on a disk. Typically, on PCs, a sector holds 512 bytes of information.