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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.
Some vendor-specific external drive enclosures (e.g. Maxtor, owned by Seagate since 2006) are known to use HPA to limit the capacity of unknown replacement hard drives installed into the enclosure. When this occurs, the drive may appear to be limited in size (e.g. 128 GB), which can look like a BIOS or dynamic drive overlay (DDO) problem.
Before Windows 7, the system and boot partitions were, by default, the same and were given the "C:" drive letter. [7]: 971 Since Windows 7, however, Windows Setup creates, by default, a separate system partition that is not given an identifier and therefore is hidden. The boot partition is still given "C:" as its identifier.
When enabled via the AHCI controller, this allows the SATA host bus adapter to enter a low-power state during periods of inactivity, thus saving energy. The drawback to this is increased periodic latency as the drive must be re-activated and brought back on-line before it can be used, and this will often appear as a delay to the end-user.
Control Panel is a component of Microsoft Windows that provides the ability to view and change system settings. It consists of a set of applets that include adding or removing hardware and software, controlling user accounts, changing accessibility options, and accessing networking settings.
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is an open standard that operating systems can use to discover and configure computer hardware components, to perform power management (e.g. putting unused hardware components to sleep), auto configuration (e.g. Plug and Play and hot swapping), and status monitoring.
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However, this lets the disk spin very often as the drive repeatedly needs to unleash and then park its heads. The generated noises can be thus regarded as distracting by the user. To circumvent this issue, the user can switch the drive to the lowest degree of power management (next value, 255, turns power management off): [6] hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda