Electronic non-volatile memory that is easy to erase and reprogram.

A long-term storage device; a thick magnetic disk made of several aluminum platters in a protective shell.

An electronic interface that allows communication between a motherboard's data pathos or bus and a computer's hard disks.

A memory storage device designed to allow access to non-volatile storage media through a PCI express (PCIe) bus.

A storage device that records binary information through pits in a reflectively-coated disc. Optical discs use lasers for reading and writing information.

A flash memory device is often used in digital cameras.

A flash device with a large storage capacity comparable to a hard disk drive's.

An extension to the SATA standard that enables SATA drives to attach externally.

The latest generation of standards for hard disk and other storage devices.

The disc drive that reads and writes data from optical media.

Discs that are easily portable and can store large amounts of data.

A disk sub-system that combines multiple physical disks into a single logical storage unit.

A configuration that places multiple disks in a single logical storage unit.

A container in a volume that holds files or other directories.

A special file system designed to support large flash drives.

A file is a one-dimensional stream of bits treated as a logical unit. They are the most basic component that a file system uses to organize raw bits of data on the storage device itself. The filename is made up of the directory path plus the file name. An extension can also be added to the filename to identify the file type and the program used to create, view, and modify the file.

A means for organizing and storing data and information on a storage device.

The process of preparing a partition to use a specific file system.

Microsoft's default file system.

A single accessible storage area within a file system.

Prepare a new disk for use.

A section of a hard disk separate from the rest. Partitions allow the operating system to manage the information in each section separately.

A Windows technology that helps prevent drive failures by allowing you to group drives into a storage pool and make data backups.

An extended volume has unallocated disk space on the same disk.

A mount point is an empty folder on an existing volume that points to another partition. Data saved to the folder is physically saved on the referenced partition.

A spanned volume has unallocated disk space on a different disk.

A Windows function that allows you to group physical disks into storage pools and create virtual disks from the available capacity.

Parity requires that you have at least three storage devices. It uses parity information to reconstruct data if one of the storage devices fails. Parity uses less space for redundancy than the mirror options, but performance is not as good as the mirror options if a device failure occurs. Parity requires only 50 percent more redundancy space than storage space.

This option simply adds space from the storage pool to the storage space. When you select the Simple option, all of the data in the storage space is lost if one of the drives fails.

An option that allows you to allocate larger storage spaces than the disk space available in the pool.

Three-way mirror requires at least five storage devices. The data is written to three storage devices. This option provides redundancy for the data if two storage devices fail at one time.

Two-way mirror requires at least two storage devices. The data is written to two devices. Two-way mirror requires twice as much device space as the amount of storage allocated to the storage space. This option protects you from a single storage device failure.

A program that optimizes the performance of your hard drive by joining fragments of files that are in different locations on your hard drive into a single location.

a Microsoft feature that lets your revert a computer's state to a previous period in time.

A program that updates your Windows operating system.

Firmware that initializes hardware at startup and provides runtime services to the operating system.

Reducing file fragments by grouping file pieces on a hard drive together.

An SSD function that configures the operating system to communicate with an SSD device and tell it which blocks of data on the device are no longer required and can be deleted.

A software program specification that connects firmware to the operating system. UEFI is eventually expected to replace BIOS.