cloister

n 1: a place of religious seclusion (such as a monastery) [syn: {religious

residence}]

2: a courtyard with covered walks (as in religious

institutions)

v 1: surround with a cloister, as of a garden

2: seclude from the world in or as if in a cloister; "She

cloistered herself in the office"

cluster

An elementary unit of allocation of a disk made

up of one or more physical {blocks}.

A {file} is made up of a whole number of possibly

non-contiguous clusters. The cluster size is a tradeoff

between space efficiency (the bigger is the cluster, the

bigger is on the average the wasted space at the end of each

file) and the length of the {FAT}.

(1996-11-04)