Chapter 2: Expansion Cards, Storage Devices, and Power Supplies

Question 1

An ____ is used for any expansion card that enhances the system, allowing it to interface with devices that offer input to the system, output from the system of both. Examples of modern ____ cards are USB cards, storage cards like eSATA (external SATA), Thunderbolt cards, etc.

Answer 1

I/O (Input/Output) card, I/O

Question 2

Hard drives use a ____ medium to store data.

Answer 2

magnetic storage

Question 3

The hard disk drive system contains the following three critical components:

Answer 3

1. Controller
2. Hard Disk
3. Host Bus Adapter

Question 4

What does SAS stand for?

Answer 4

Serial Attached SCSI (Small Computer System Interface

Question 5

During hard disk drive preparation, concentric rings or ____ are created, which are drawn magnetically around the surface of the platters.

Answer 5

tracks

Question 6

During hard disk drive preparation, ____ are delineated within each of the tracks after they are created. ____ are the magnetic domains that represent the smallest units of storage on the disk’s platters.

Answer 6

sectors

Question 7

Magnetic-drive sectors commonly store only ____ of data each.

Answer 7

512 bytes (1/2 KB)

Question 8

In hard disk drives, filesystems laid down on the tracks and their sectors routinely group a configurable number of sectors into equal or larger sets called ____ or ____.

Answer 8

clusters, allocation units

Question 9

No two files are allowed to occupy the same ____ or ____ on a hard drive. This leads to potential waste of storage space.

Answer 9

sector, cluster

Question 10

The following spin rates have been used in the industry for the platters in conventional magnetic hard disk drives:

A higher rpm rating results in the ability to move data more quickly, and consume more energy and produce more heat.

Answer 10

• 5,400 rpm
• 7,200 rpm
• 10,000 rpm
• 15,000 rpm

Question 11

The most common hard drive form factors (sizes) are ____ (Desktops) and ____ (Laptops; desktops with converter kit mount).

Answer 11

3.5”, 2.5”

Question 12

The ____ is a conventional HDD manufactured with a substantial amount of flash memory-like solid-state aboard.

Answer 12

SSHD or Solid-State Hybrid Drive

Question 13

Of the three SSD technologies, the ____ interface is the slowest of them, but about 6x faster than conventional HDDs.

Answer 13

SATA

Question 14

Of the three SSD technologies, the ____ interface is in the middle to fastest when it comes to data transfer speeds.

Answer 14

PCIe

Question 15

Of the three SSD technologies, the ____ interface is an open standard. It doesn’t have a specific connector type.

Answer 15

NVMe or Non-Volatile Memory Express

Question 16

NVMe SSD can be connected to the following ports on a motherboard:

Answer 16

• SATA
• PCIe
• M.2

Question 17

____ is a SSD form factor specifically designed for portable devices such as laptops and smaller. It uses the same physical layout as the mPCIe standard with 30 mm-wide 52-pin connector.

Answer 17

mSATA or mini-Serial ATA

Question 18

____ is a SSD form factor designed to replace the mSATA standard for ultra-small expansion components. It uses a narrower 22 mm 66-pin connector and the slots and cards are keyed for a specific type.

Answer 18

M.2

Question 19

A/An ____ consists of multiple hard drives that work together as one system, providing increased performance or fault tolerance.

Answer 19

RAID or Redundant Array of Independent Disks

Question 20

RAID ____ (aka. disk striping) is where a striped set of equal space from at least two drives creates a larger volume. It doesn’t provide fault tolerance, but makes for faster data access. If any one of the drives fails, all content is lost.

Answer 20

0

Question 21

RAID ____ (aka. disk mirroring) is a method of producing fault tolerance by writing all data simultaneously to two separate drives. Only two drives can be used in a RAID ____ array. It also doesn’t help access speed.

Answer 21

1

Question 22

RAID ____ (aka. stripe set with parity) is where each stripe places data on n - 1 disks, and parity computed from the data is placed on the remaining disk. The parity is interleaved across all the drives in the array, and if one drive fails, the data can be recovered using the remaining parity. The loss of more than one drive results in catastrophic loss of all data in the array. A minimum of three drives is required for a RAID ____.

Answer 22

5

Question 23

RAID ____ adds fault tolerance to RAID 0 through the RAID 1 mirroring of each disk in the RAID 0 striped set. It requires a minimum of four drives.

Answer 23

10

Question 24

CDs are capable of storing what three common capacities?

Answer 24

• 700 MB
• 800 MB
• 900 MB

Question 25

____ can be single sided or double sided (DS), single layer encoded or double layer (DL) encoded. They can hold 4.7 GB to 17.1 GB of data.

Answer 25

DVDs

Question 26

____ was desinged for modern HD video sources and employs a violet laser. A basic disc has a 25 GB storage capacity.

Answer 26

Blu-ray

Question 27

A ____ converts 110V or 220V AC current in the DC voltages that a computer needs to operate.

Answer 27

PSU or Power Supply Unit

Question 28

The PSU (Power Supply Unit) provides what five voltages to a computers components?

Answer 28

• +3.3V
• +5V
• -5V
• +12V
• -12V

Question 29

PSUs are rated in ____. The higher the number, the more power your computer can draw from the power supply.

Answer 29

watt

Question 30

What are the two power connector standards for ATX motherboards?

Answer 30

• ATX12V 2.x
• EPS12V (Servers)