Hey there, folks. Today we’re taking a look at a few more common terms in the world of computing – both software and hardware related. Let’s get started.
Native Mode: Basically, native mode is the default operating state of any given computer system. Sort of. For example – let’s say you’ve got a Windows PC, with Windows 7 installed. So long as all programs on the system run in C(the default programming language of the Windows framework) it’s running in Native Mode. Of course, if you were to install Linux on your system and dual-boot it, Linux would technically be running in native mode as well. Basically, Native Mode is the operating state any given system is designed to run in.
Fragmentation: Basically, files can be stored in one of two states in computing, contiguous and non-contiguous. The former means the file is essentially intact, and all the different pieces are stored in essentially the same place. The latter means it’s broken into ‘chunks’ and stored across the hard drive. Here’s where we start to run into a spot of trouble- Windows tends to store files in a non-contiguous format if they’re too large to store in a single area. As a result, certain pieces of data might end up getting lost, or so scattered that the speed of your operating system slows down to a crawl.
Defrag utilities are designed to address this issue, essentially ‘reorganizing’ the fragmented pieces.
Other forms of fragmentation exist outside of file fragmentation, as well: external fragmentation and internal fragmentation both occur in a system’s Random Access Memory. The former is the result of small holes in the memory that aren’t being used properly, while the latter, more common type of fragmentation that results from the RAM allocating larger frames of memory than the system requested.
Head Crash: This one’s pretty simple, but still a rather nasty thing to have happen. A head crash is a physical ‘crash’ of a hard drive, wherein the read-write head comes into close (usually violent) contact with one of the discs, generally as the result of physical damage. This is usually both irreparable and irreversible – the most you can do is hope that some of your data can be retrieved.
Bus: A bus is pretty much a bridge between different computer components, designed to transfer data between those components.
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