90 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
Physical disk
A disk (p. 83) that is physically a separate device. Thus, floppy disks, hard disks and CD-ROMs are
physical disks.
Primary partition
See Primary volume (p. 90).
Primary volume
A volume which is located on a portion of a basic disk (p. 81) and works as if it were on a separate
hard disk.
Primary volumes often store files that are necessary to start the machine or an operating system.
Many operating systems can start only from a primary volume.
The number of primary volumes on the disk is limited and depends on the partitioning scheme (p.
89).
A primary volume is also called a primary partition.
R
Root folder
The folder (p. 86) where the folder tree of a file system (p. 86) begins.
Starting from the root folder, you can uniquely describe the file (p. 85) position in the folder tree by
sequentially naming all the intermediate nested folders—for example:
\Windows\System32\Vmm32.vxd.
In this example, the Windows folder is a subfolder of the root folder, the System32 folder is a
subfolder of the Windows folder, and the Vmm32.vxd file is located in the System32 folder.
S
Sector
The smallest information unit on a disk (p. 83) that is transferred in a single read or write operation.
Usually, a sector is 512 bytes in size.
Simple volume
A volume (p. 92) that consists of disk space from a single dynamic disk (p. 84).
Physically, a simple volume can occupy more than one region of disk space, which can be logically
perceived as a single contiguous region.
When you extend a simple volume to another disk, the volume becomes a spanned volume (p. 90).
When you add a mirror to a simple volume, the volume becomes a mirrored volume (p. 89).
