Hard Disk Drive Basics
On a hard disk, data is stored in thin, concentric bands. A drive head, while in one position can read or write a circular ring, or band called a track. There can be more than a thousand tracks on a 3.5-inch hard disk. More ...
Why Does My Hard Drive Show Less Space Than the Specification?
Your hard drive may show less space than the published specifications due to a number of reasons. 1. The way size is calculated and displayed. Some computers have a non-DOS hard drive partition that is used for features such as Hibernation, or Recovery. More ...
Build Your Own Computer
Before you begin make sure you have all the tools you need and a clean space to work. Make sure you have all required tools and materials. Unpack the materials once package at a time and inspect them to make sure they are not broke or defective. More ...
Serial ATA Hard Drive
New computers will begin using the SATA (Serial ATA) interface to the hard disk. Some new motherboards come with built-in SATA support. The SATA interface does not use a ribbon cable. Instead, it uses a cable similar to a network cable with only seven wires. More ...
SD (Secure Digital) Memory Card Basics
SD cards come in a variety of sizes, storage capacities, and transfer speeds. This makes it confusing for users to choose the correct memory card for their products. This article touches on the SD technologies to help you get the correct SD memory card. More ...
The Small Computer System Interface (SCSI)
SCSI is complicated to configure and troubleshoot with incompatibility between devices being a common problem. To setup a SCSI system, you need to know which SCSI standard the devices support. The host adapter must match the devices. More ...
IEEE 1284 Parallel Port
The parallel port was primarily used to connect a printer to a PC. Today, the parallel port is obsolete, being replaced by the USB port. Although now obsolete, millions of parallel port printers were manufactured and no doubt many of them are still in use today. I'll briefly describe the it in this article because you may run into a question about it in the CompTIA A+ Certification Exam. More ...
How to Choose a Computer Case
Computer cases come in many sizes, configurations, and with many features. Which case you need depends upon what you will use your computer for. You might choose a standard mid tower case for a home computer that will be used for word processing and spread sheets. For a game machine or server you might choose a full tower case because of its expansion capability. More ...
Buffered, Unbuffered, Registered Memory, What is the Difference?
Buffered and Registered memory are the same thing. The buffer is a register that resides between the system's memory controller and the RAM. The buffer is often, but not always, used to provide ECC (Error Checking and Correction). More ...
Power Supply Form Factors
The shape and physical layout of a power supply is called its 'form factor'. Power supplies come in several industry standard form factors. Power supplies with the same form factor are physically interchangeable. More ...
Understanding Graphic Cards
Dedicated graphics cards, which we will be discussing in this article, are needed if you want to do 3D gaming or watch high definition movies. The GPU (Graphic Processing Unit) is the most determinant feature of every graphics card when it comes to the overall performance and speed. More ...
Plug and Play Resource Allocation
Early PCs used a bus called Industry Standard Architecture (ISA). ISA devices cannot share resources, each ISA device must have its own IRQ. In 1993, Microsoft and Intel developed Plug and Play (PnP) to solve this problem. More ...
ABC's Of DVD Drive Abbreviations
The number of different formats available in DVD drives can be confusing to anyone. A few of the common formats are DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM ,DVD+R DL and DVD±RW. In This article we take a look at the more common formats of DVD drives in order to shed some light on all the choices available. More ...
SDRAM Types: DDR, DDR2, DDR3, DDR4
With computer memory modules, DDR stands for Double Data Rate because it performs two transfers per clock cycle, the number after DDR specifies other characteristics like latency, speed, and voltage. More ...
