CYLINDER - This term is somewhat synonymous with the tracks on a hard disk drive. However, instead of a single track, a cylinder refers to the location of all the drive read and write heads, typically accessing multiple platters. Thus, when these tracks are mentally pictured, they are stacked up like a cylinder. Since all the heads are locked together, a specific cylinder number is equivalent to a track number on a specific platter, but refers to all platters at once. Got it? Whew. |
CYLINDER Definition
