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disk pack

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disk pack

[′disk ‚pak]
(computer science)
A set of magnetic disks that can be removed from a disk drive as a unit.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

disk pack

An early removable hard disk module used in minicomputers and mainframes that contained two or more platters housed in a dust-free container. For mounting, the protective bottom of the unit was removed, and the disk pack was placed into the drive. Then the top part of the disk pack was unscrewed and removed.


Disk Packs
Disk drives used to be the size of a washing machine. These were the kinds of removable disk modules that were used in them.







The Real Thing
This photo taken in the 1970s shows the disk pack being loaded into the drive. Such disks held only a couple of hundred megabytes. (Image courtesy of Unisys Corporation.)







A Roomful of Drives
All the storage in this room could be contained in one USB drive today. (Image courtesy of Control Data Corporation.)
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References in periodicals archive
Architectural innovation leaves the core technological concepts of the components intact but changes the way they are designed to work together, as in the change from removable disk packs to the sealed Winchester disk drive architecture.
Positive oil circulation through the clutch and brake disk packs is vital to cool and lubricate the friction surfaces.
For optimized protection--but at a higher cost than either tape or ATA disk--use RAID disk packs, writing the data using redundancy (such as RAID 1+0 or RAID 5).
The company maintains who off-site vaults, one for storing magnetic media such as computer tapes, disk packs, and floppy disks and another for storing microfilm and microfiche.
Some items that typically must be ordered include disk packs, magnetic tape for systems with a tape drive, labels for the collection list, printer ribbons, 8 1/2 11 report paper, and 11 14 "stock' paper.
These are generally kept on portable disk packs, which are not excessively bulky.
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