Configure Disks

Question 1

What is the structure of a disk?

Answer 1

Track - Made of sectors
Sector -
Cluster

Question 2

What is the sector of a disk?

Answer 2

Created by manufacturer, minimum size
Old disks: 512byte sectors
Newer disks: 4kb sectors

Question 3

What is a cluster?

Answer 3

Allocation Unit Size = Cluster
Contiguous sections of sectors
Smallest amount of space windows can allocate on disk for a file

Question 4

What is the difference between size and size on disk?

Answer 4

Size is size of actual file

Size on disk is size of cluster(s) provisioned to store that file

Question 5

What is an allocation unit?

Answer 5

Smallest amount of space a file can consume on disk

Question 6

What are the disadvantages of MBR?

Answer 6

Partition table stored on boot sector
4 partitions max
2TB max

Question 7

What are the advantages of GPT?

Answer 7

Partition table stored with every partition (error correction)
128 partitions max
18EB max
Requires UEFI

Question 8

What are advantages of ReFS?

Answer 8

Data Integrity (built-in checksums)
High availability (fix errors and corruption online auto)
Metadata structure tree of disk info

Question 9

What are the disadvantages of ReFS?

Answer 9

File system compression
File system encryption
Data deduplication
Disk Quotas
Removable media
Not bootable

Question 10

What are the only allocation unit sizes for ReFS?

Answer 10

4k

64k

Question 11

What performance impact is there between fixed size and dynamically expanding for a vhdx disk?

Answer 11

None