PC Doctor On Call - Home - Computer Repairs & Upgrades, Northern Ireland

False - A result of a condition. It would be stored in memory as zero. See also True and Data Types.

FAT - File Allocation Table. The most basic format used to format a DOS volume on a computer. This is also known as FAT16 due to the maximum number of allocation units that can be in a volume (65,536). This makes a volume limit of 2Gb when the maximum allocation unit size of 32,768 bytes is reached. Different size volumes are made up by adjusting the size of the allocation units not the number of allocation units in a volume in an attempt to make each allocation unit's free space efficient because small files take a full allocation unit. See also Allocation Unit, Integer, FAT32 and Megabyte.

FAT32 - Later advances in technology saw the advent of hard disc drives far exceeding the 2Gb limited imposed by the FAT format and so this later format was born. This involves, decreasing the size of the allocation unit to 4,096 bytes and allowing a total of 4,294,967,296 allocation units giving a total maximum volume size of 17,592,186,044,416 bytes or 16,384Gb. See

FDISK - The program that creates volumes on disc surfaces. Usually this must be used without the operating system running, so a bootable floppy disc with this program on must be employed. See also Disk Administrator for NT computers.

File - A data structure usually found on a disk that contains data or programs. This is the mechanism in which to store data and programs. Data is stored in files which are stored in folders (or directories) which are stored in volumes which are stored on the physical disk. This is the electronic version of data written on a piece of paper (the file) stored in a brown buff folder in a volume of a metal filing cabinate. See also folder, volume and disk.

Filename - The reference to a file by way of giving it a name. The same can be done for folders or directories. See also File and Folder.

Folder - Also known as a directory, as it is a list of data and/or program files that are contained in the folder. See also file.

Fonts - These are the different type faces that can be displayed on screen or printed out. Combinations of size, bold and italics can give pleasant results to documents you produce. Old style fonts have fixed sizes, and later TTF (true type fonts) allow a far greater range of sizes to be used. A font should not be confused with a character set. See also character sets.

Format - The process of preparing a the surface of the magnetic medium ready for reading and writing during normal operation. This involves ensuring that the correct number of bytes per allocation unit can be written to and read from the medium. This is much like, taking a blank piece of paper and ruling lines on the page, ensuring that enough lines are present ready for writing on. Formatting a magnetic tape or disc usually overwrites any previous format used, and so data could be lost. However, please be aware that if the same format is used, it is possible to recover most of this information by using special software to read the disc surface bit by bit. Large disc surfaces can be split into volumes using a program called FDISK. Each volume is formatted independently. See also Allocation Unit and FDISK.

Floppy Discs - A removable disc with a double sided platter encased in cardboard or plastic that can be used to move small amounts of data and programs between computers. They have a magnetic surface on both sides of the platter. A motor turns the platter at a fixed speed and a head is allowed to move across the disc platter to read and write the data. In this way, the whole disc can be read from or written to. They became known in the early days of computers as "floppy discs" or just "floppies" because of the flexible nature of the cardboard material they were encased in. Early cardboard encased examples were 8 inches wide and later ones 5.25 inches wide. Modern floppy discs are 3.5 inches wide and are encased in a more resilient toughened plastic. Storage device sizes are measured in bytes, a byte representing a single character of information. See also Storage Devices, Kilobyte, Megabyte and Gigabyte.

FSB - Front Side Bus. The bus that the processor and memory in a computer is connected to. Usually this bus is referred to with respect to its speed. The faster this bus can be, the faster the computer is. See also Processor, Memory and Bus.

FTP - File Transfer Protocol. This is a protocol used over the Internet to allow the transfer of files between two computers using the TCP/IP protocol. The computers usually have a client and server relationship. You the client logs into the server and requests a file to be downloaded and stored in the current directory you were in when you called the FTP client program. FTP relies on TCP/IP packets of data to be transmitted (or received) usually on port 20 and control for login on port 21. See also Protocol, Client/Server and TCP/IP.

Download TeamViewer