Chapter 2 - Storage Devices & Power Supplies

Question 1

tell me the 3 critical components of the hard disk drive

2-70

Answer 1

controller
hard disk
host bus adapter

Question 2

what are the two most common types of controllers?
what do the controllers do? (5 things)

2-70

Answer 2

PATA and SATA

1. controls the drive
2. controls how the drive operates
3. controls how the data is encoded onto the platters
4. controls how the data sends signals to the various motors in the drive
5. receives signals from the sensors inside the drive

Question 3

what is the hard drive?
what are platters?

2-70

Answer 3

the physical storage medium

the small discs that hard drive systems store information on

Question 4

what does HBA stand for and what does it do?

2-70

Answer 4

host bus adapter

its the translator, converting signals from the controller to signals the computer can understand

Question 5

what’s the difference between a track and a sector?

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Answer 5

a track is a concentric ring that goes around the surface of the platter
a sector is just one section of the track, it is the smallest unit of storage on the discs’

Question 6

what’s the max number of sectors can the BIOS support per track?
how much data can each sector hold?

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Answer 6

63

512 bytes

Question 7

tell me the 3 components of the hard disk geometry

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Answer 7

number of sectors
number of read/write heads in the disk assembly
number of cylinders in the assembly

Question 8

tell me 5 spin rates for the platters

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Answer 8

5400 
7200
10,000
12,000
15,000

all of these are in rpm

Question 9

SSDs use the same type of technology found in what?

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Answer 9

flash memory

Question 10

Optical Disc Capacities

1. basic DVD (single sided, single layer)
2. DVD dual sided, single layer
3. DVD single sided, dual layer
4. DVD dual sided dual layer
5. blu ray single sided single layer
6. blu ray single sided dual layer
7. blu ray dual sided dual layer

Answer 10

4.7
9.4
8.5
17.1
25
50
100

all in GigiBytes

Question 11

tell me the 4 DVD formats

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Answer 11

DVD-ROM
DVD-R
DVD-RW
DVD-RAM

Question 12

IDE. what does it stand for?
what do we call it now?
what do we favor instead?

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Answer 12

integrated drive electronics
PATA

now we prefer to use SATA

Question 13

you have a couple IDE drives.
if you use only one, where do you put the jumper?
what if drive 1 should be master and drive 2 should be slave?

2-87

Answer 13

nowhere

1 - put the jumper on pins 3 and 4
2 - put the jumper on pins 5 and 6

Question 14

what do you install at both ends of the bus to keep the signals on the bus?

2-89

Answer 14

terminators

Question 15

two types of cabling. what are they?

2-90

Answer 15

internal and external

Question 16

what is the SCSI ID number used for?

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Answer 16

giving a device a higher priority

slower devices get higher number and therefore higher priority

Question 17

tell me the difference between RAID 0, 1, 5

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Answer 17

0 - disk striping, need at least 2
1 - disk mirroring, need at least 2
5 - redundant striped volume set, need at least 3

Question 18

how does a power supply provide power to the PC?

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Answer 18

it steps down the voltage from 110 or 220 to 3.3, 5, and 12, and turns the AC into DC

Question 19

the standard peripheral power connector is also called a what?

2-110

Answer 19

Molex connector

Question 20

which power connectors are for floppies?

2-111

Answer 20

Berg

Question 21

the original ATX system connector provided how many volts through how many pins?

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Answer 21

6, 20

Question 22

6 pin and 8 pin power connectors are for what?

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Answer 22

the PCIe

Question 23

how many pins on the ATX12V 2.x connector?

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Answer 23

24

Question 24

on your SD card, what does SD stand for?

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Answer 24

secure digital

Question 25

how much space is on a 3 1/2” floppy HD?

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Answer 25

1.44 MB (incredible)

Question 26

2 types of SSD

2-75

Answer 26

volatile DRAM and flash RAM