5.3 – Given a scenario, troubleshoot hard drives and RAID arrays

Question 1

What should you do first to repair a drive that is acting sluggish?
❍ A. Remove the drive and recover the data.
❍ B. Run Disk Cleanup.
❍ C. Run Disk Defragmenter.
❍ D. Scan for viruses.

Answer 1

C. Attempt to defragment the disk. If it is not necessary, Windows lets you know.
Then you can move to other options, such as scanning the drive for viruses.

Question 2

Which of the following are possible symptoms of hard drive failure? (Select the
two best answers.)
 ❍ A. System lockup
 ❍ B. Antivirus alerts
 ❍ C. Failing bootup files
 ❍ D. Network drive errors
 ❍ E. BIOS doesn’t recognize the drive

Answer 2

A and C. System lockups and failing bootup files or other failing file operations
are possible symptoms of hard drive failure. Antivirus alerts tell you that the
operating system has been compromised, viruses should be quarantined, and a
full scan should be initiated. Sometimes hard drives can fail due to heavy virus
activity, but usually if the malware is caught quickly enough, the hard drive should
survive. Network drives are separate from the local hard drive; inability to connect
to a network drive suggests a network configuration issue. If the BIOS doesn’t
recognize the drive, consider a BIOS update.

Question 3

You just replaced an SATA hard drive that you suspected had failed. You also
replaced the data cable between the hard drive and the motherboard. When you
reboot the computer, you notice that the SATA drive is not recognized by the
BIOS. What most likely happened to cause this?
❍ A. The drive has not been formatted yet.
❍ B. The BIOS does not support SATA.
❍ C. The SATA port is faulty.
❍ D. The drive is not jumpered properly

Answer 3

C. Most likely, the SATA port is faulty. It might have been damaged during the
upgrade. To test the theory, you would plug the SATA data cable into another port
on the motherboard. You can’t format the drive until it has been recognized by the
BIOS, which, by the way, should recognize SATA drives if the motherboard has
SATA ports! SATA drives don’t use jumpers unless they need to coexist with older
IDE drives. Most of today’s drives do not come with jumpers.

Question 4

You are troubleshooting an SATA hard drive that doesn’t function on a PC. When
you try it on another computer, it works fine. You suspect a power issue and
decide to take voltage readings from the SATA power connector coming from the
power supply. Which of the following readings should you find?
❍ A. 5 V and 12 V
❍ B. 5 V, 12 V, and 24 V
❍ C. 3.3 V, 5 V, and 12 V
❍ D. 3.3 V and 12 V

Answer 4

C. If you test an SATA power cable, you should find 3.3 V (orange wire), 5 V (red
wire), and 12 V (yellow wire). If any of these doesn’t test properly, try another SATA
power connector.

Question 5

You are troubleshooting a Windows Server that normally boots from an SATAbased RAID 0 array. The message you receive is “missing operating system.” As it
turns out, another technician has been updating the BIOS on several of the servers in your organization, including this one. What configured setting needs to be
changed? (Select the best answer.)
❍ A. RAID 1
❍ B. AHCI
❍ C. S.M.A.R.T.
❍ D. NVMe

Answer 5

B. When the BIOS was updated, the SATA setting in the BIOS probably reverted
to AHCI. That caused the RAID 0 array to be ignored, and so the OS would not
boot, because it is stored on that array. The setting should be changed from AHCI
to RAID (or similar name). Now, if this was a RAID 1 mirror, then a copy of the OS
would be on each drive, and it might still boot (though you would probably receive
a message as to the state of the mirror being degraded or broken). But with RAID
0, the OS is striped across two or more drives—all drives need to be present and
accessed via RAID in order for the OS to boot. That’s one of the reasons why the
golden rule for many years was to “mirror the OS, and stripe the data.” Phew!
Anyways, on to the incorrect answers. RAID 1 is incorrect because there would be
no option to set this; in the scenario, we are using RAID 0. S.M.A.R.T. is the monitoring system included in HDDs and SSDs. NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express)
is the specification for non-volatile storage used by M.2 drives, PCIe card–based
drives, and so on. Remember to back up any and all BIOS configurations!

Question 6

What should you do first if your SATA magnetic disk begins to make loud clicking
noises? (Select the best answer.)
 ❍ A. Copy the data to another drive.
 ❍ B. Replace with a new SATA drive.
 ❍ C. Update the UEFI/BIOS.
 ❍ D. Replace the SATA power cable.

Answer 6

. A. Don’t hesitate! Copy the data to another drive. Afterward, update the UEFI/
BIOS, replace the drive with a new one, and consider a new SATA cable while you
are at it.