Storage Glossary
Plain-English definitions for terms commonly seen in storage health and benchmark tools.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| S.M.A.R.T. | Drive self-monitoring framework that exposes health and reliability-related data. |
| Sequential | Large contiguous data transfers. |
| Random I/O | Operations directed at scattered locations rather than one continuous region. |
| Queue depth | Number of outstanding I/O requests waiting or being processed. |
| IOPS | Input/output operations completed per second. |
| Latency | Time taken to complete an I/O operation. |
| TRIM | A discard notification that helps an SSD know which logical blocks no longer contain live data. |
| Thermal throttling | Automatic performance reduction used to control device temperature. |
| SLC cache | A fast write-cache technique used by many TLC/QLC SSDs to absorb bursts. |
| Reallocated sector | A logical sector redirected to spare media after the original area becomes unreliable. |
| Pending sector | A sector that could not be read reliably and is awaiting later resolution. |