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]] In the context of Computer Disk Storage , a sector is a sub-division of a ''track'' (Figure 1, item A) on a Magnetic Disk or Optical Disc . Each sector stores a fixed amount of data. The typical formatting of these media provide space for 512 bytes (for magnetic disks) or 2048 bytes (for optical discs) of user-accessible data per sector. Mathematically, the word '' Sector '' means a portion of Disk between a center, two Radii and a corresponding Arc (see Figure 1, item B - a ''piece of pie''). Thus, the common ''disk sector'' (Figure 1, item C) actually refers to the intersection of a ''track'' and ''mathematical sector''. Early on in various computing fields, the term Block was used for this small chunk of data, but ''sector'' appears to have become more prevalent. One quite probable reason for this is the fact ''block'' has often been applied to data chunks of varying sizes for many types of data streams, rather than being limited to the smallest accessible amount of data on a medium. For example, the Linux program Dd allows one to set the ''block size'' to be used during execution with the parameter, bs=''bytes''. But doing so never changes the actual ''sector size'' of a medium, only the size of the blocks dd will manipulate.SEE ALSO
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