disk drive

from The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48

Drive \Drive\ (dr[imac]v), n.
   1. The act of driving; a trip or an excursion in a carriage,
      as for exercise or pleasure; -- distinguished from a ride
      taken on horseback.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. A place suitable or agreeable for driving; a road prepared
      for driving.
      [1913 Webster]

   3. Violent or rapid motion; a rushing onward or away; esp., a
      forced or hurried dispatch of business.
      [1913 Webster]

            The Murdstonian drive in business.    --M. Arnold.
      [1913 Webster]

   4. In type founding and forging, an impression or matrix,
      formed by a punch drift.
      [1913 Webster]

   5. A collection of objects that are driven; a mass of logs to
      be floated down a river. [Colloq.]

   Syn: See {Ride}.
        [1913 Webster]

   6. a private road; a driveway.
      [PJC]

   7. a strong psychological motivation to perform some
      activity.
      [PJC]

   8. (Computers) a device for reading or writing data from or
      to a data storage medium, as a {disk drive}, a {tape
      drive}, a {CD drive}, etc.
      [PJC]

   9. an organized effort by a group to accomplish a goal within
      a limited period of time; as, a fund-raising drive.
      [PJC]

   10. a physiological function of an organism motivating it to
       perform specific behaviors; as, the sex drive.
       [PJC]

   11. (Football) the period during which one team sustains
       movement of the ball toward the opponent's goal without
       losing possession of the ball; as, a long drive
       downfield.
       [PJC]

   12. an act of driving a vehicle, especially an automobile;
       the journey undertaken by driving an automobile; as, to
       go for a drive in the country.
       [PJC]

   13. the mechanism which causes the moving parts of a machine
       to move; as, a belt drive.
       [PJC]

   14. the way in which the propulsive force of a vehicle is
       transmitted to the road; as, a car with four-wheel drive,
       front-wheel drive, etc.
       [PJC]

from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)

disk drive
floppy disk drive
floppy drive

   <hardware, storage> (Or "hard disk drive", "hard drive",
   "floppy disk drive", "floppy drive") A {peripheral} device
   that reads and writes {hard disks} or {floppy disks}.  The
   drive contains a motor to rotate the disk at a constant rate
   and one or more read/write heads which are positioned over the
   desired {track} by a servo mechanism.  It also contains the
   electronics to amplify the signals from the heads to normal
   digital logic levels and vice versa.

   In order for a disk drive to start to read or write a given
   location a read/write head must be positioned radially over
   the right track and rotationally over the start of the right
   sector.

   Radial motion is known as "{seek}ing" and it is this which
   causes most of the intermittent noise heard during disk
   activity.  There is usually one head for each disk surface and
   all heads move together.  The set of locations which are
   accessible with the heads in a given radial position are known
   as a "{cylinder}".  The "{seek time}" is the time taken to
   seek to a different cylinder.

   The disk is constantly rotating (except for some {floppy disk}
   drives where the motor is switched off between accesses to
   reduce wear and power consumption) so positioning the heads
   over the right sector is simply a matter of waiting until it
   arrives under the head.  With a single set of heads this
   "{rotational latency}" will be on average half a revolution
   but some big drives have multiple sets of heads spaced at
   equal angles around the disk.

   If seeking and rotation are independent, access time is seek
   time + rotational latency.  When accessing multiple tracks
   sequentially, data is sometimes arranged so that by the time
   the seek from one track to the next has finished, the disk has
   rotated just enough to begin accessing the next track.

   See also {sector interleave}.

   The disks may be {removable disks}; floppy disks always are,
   removable hard disks were common on {mainframes} and
   {minicomputers} but less so on {microcomputers} until the mid
   1990s(?) with products like the {Zip Drive}.

   A {CD-ROM} drive is not usually referred to as a disk drive.

   Two common interfaces for disk drives (and other devices) are
   {SCSI} and {IDE}.  {ST-506} used to be common in
   microcomputers (in the 1980s?).

   (1997-04-15)