Hard disks consist of a set of magnetic coated metal disks that are vacuumsealed inside a case to keep out the dust. The magnetic surfaces of the disk are formatted using a read/write head to provide the magnetic areas. The storage areas form concentric circles called tracks and each track is subdivided into sections called sectors. The disk are rotated at high speed and read from or write by the read/write head that move cross the surface of the disks. In server computers, hard disks can be connected together and made to operate ad one unit using RAID (a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks – see Unit 17). This can speed up the system and provide a way of recovering data if the system crash (fails suddenly and completely, usually referring to the failure of a hard disk). There are a variety of optical storage devices that use laser light to read or write to a disk, including: CDROMs (Compact Disk Read Only Memory), CD-R (Recordable Compact Disk), DVD (Digital Versatile Disk – previously known as Digital Video Disk). An input device called a barcode reader is a specially type of scanner for reading barcodes (a set of printed bars of varying thickness that are used to identify product e.g. used to price items in supermarkets). When comparing computers, the power of the computer is important. This is mainly determined by the speed and capacity (size) of each part of the computer. Speed is measured in hetz (Hz) i.e. cycles per second. Capacity is measured in bytes (B) where 1 byte = 8 bits (binary digits) = 1 character. When specifying a computer the following are normally quoted: a) The speed of the processor (MHz – megahetz, GHz – gigahetz). b) The capacity (size) of the memory (MB – megabytes). c) The capacity (size) of the magnetic storage devices e.g. hard disk, floppy disk (MB – megabytes, GB – gigabytes). d) Th speed of the optical storage devices e.g. CD-ROM, DVD (given as a multiple of the first devices produced e.g. 24x = 24 times, 12x = 12 times). e) The display monitor size (measured in inch diagonally across the screen surface). f) The monitor image quality (resolution) given by the number of pixels (picture elements) that are used across and down the screen e.g. 800x600, or by the graphic standard used e.g. VGA (Video Graphic Array), SVGA (Super Video Graphic Array). g) The graphics card memory size (MB – mega bytes). h) The speed of the modem (measured in kbps – kilobits per second). Two different number systems are used in computer specifications: a) The decimal system, which consists of ten digits from 0 to 9, is used for measuring speed. b) The binary system, which only has two digits (1 and 0), is used for measuring capacity. The following prefixes are also used in measurements: Decimal system Binary system kilo 103 = 1 thousand 210 = 1,024 mega 106 = 1 million 220 = 1,048,576 giga 106 = 1 thousand million 230 = 1,073,741,824 e.g. 1.7GHz = one point seven thousand million cycles per second. 256 MB = 256 x 220 bytes = approximately two hundred and fifty six million bytes. Communication is provided between applications programs (wordprocessors, drawing programs, etc) and the computer hardware (the physical components of a computer system) by a set of programs collectively known as the operating system e.g. Microsoft Windows, MacOS
đang được dịch, vui lòng đợi..
