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Device configuration overlay (DCO) is a hidden area on many of today's hard disk drives (HDDs). Usually when information is stored in either the DCO or host protected area (HPA), it is not accessible by the BIOS (or UEFI), OS, or the user. However, certain tools can be used to modify the HPA or DCO.
The minimum cache size is 250 MB. In Vista or with FAT32 formatting of the drive, the maximum is 4 GB. In Windows 7 or later with NTFS or exFAT formatting, the maximum cache size is 32 GB per device. Windows Vista allows only one device to be used, while Windows 7 allows multiple caches, one per device, up to a total of 256 GB. [5]
When IBM first released the magnetic disk drive in the 1956 IBM 305, a single disk drive would be directly attached to each system, managed as a single entity.As the development of drives continued, it became apparent that reliability was a problem and systems using RAID technology evolved, so that more than one physical disk is used to produce a single logical disk.
The IDENTIFY DEVICE command queries a particular register on the IDE controller to establish the size of a drive. This register however can be changed using the SET MAX ADDRESS ATA command. If the value in the register is set to less than the actual hard drive size then effectively a host protected area is created.
At startup, device drivers opened this file and assigned it a separate letter. Frequently, to avoid confusion, the original partition and the compressed drive had their letters swapped, so that the compressed disk is C:, and the uncompressed area (often containing system files) is given a higher name.
In computer data storage, a volume or logical drive is a single accessible storage area with a single file system, typically (though not necessarily) resident on a single partition of a hard disk. Although a volume might be different from a physical disk drive, it can still be accessed with an operating system's logical interface.