Hard Drive Technologies

Question 1

Describe the cable length of:

1. SATA
2. eSATA
3. PATA

Answer 1

1. 1 Meters
2. 2 Meters
3. 18 Inches

Question 2

What are the four possible entries in a file allocation table (FAT)?

Answer 2

1. A code indicating the next cluster is available
2. An end-of-file-marker
3. A bad-sector marker
4. Number of the ending cluster

Question 3

What does a low-level formatting process do?

Answer 3

Returns the drive to a state as close to like-new as possible by writing zeros to every location on the drive.

Question 4

What type of memory do modern day SSD’s use?

Answer 4

Non volatile flash based memory

Question 5

1. What are mSATA’s used for?

2. What are M.2 SSD’s used for?

Answer 5

1. A form factor used in portable devices.

2. Form factor that installs directly into the PCIe slot.

Question 6

What’s a storage pool?

Answer 6

A collection of physical drives that enables the flexibility to add and expand capacity.

Question 7

What type of hard drive partition can be over 2.2TB? Which one has a 2.2TB limit?

Answer 7

1. GUID Partition table (GPT) disks.

2. MBR Disks.

Question 8

What sort of configuration requires three same-sized volumes?

Answer 8

Raid 5.

Question 9

What’s a factory recovery partition?

Answer 9

A hidden partition that contains a restorable copy of an installed OS.

Question 10

What is the complete list of formats windows can use?

Answer 10

FAT16, FAT32, FAT64, NTFS.

Question 11

What must you do before converting a dynamic disk to a basic disk?

Answer 11

Delete all the volumes.

Question 12

What’s the process called that speeds up the read/write times?

Answer 12

Disk Defrag.

Question 13

How can you expand the capacity of an NTFS drive?

Answer 13

By installing a second drive and mounting it to a folder on the original, smaller, NTFS drive.

Question 14

What is SATA 3.2?

Answer 14

SATAe

Question 15

What sort of data cables do PATA drives install to?

What’s the cable called?

Answer 15

40 and 80 wire, “ribbon cables”

Question 16

How much redundancy do you have with Raid 0?

Answer 16

0 Redundancy. You lose all data if a single Hard Drive fails.

Question 17

How many PATA Hard Drives can you have installed on a system with two hard drive controllers?

Answer 17

2 Drives per controller.

Question 18

What are the common HDD RPM’s?

Answer 18

5,400

7,200

10,000

15,000

Question 19

What is another name for HDD (Hard Disk Drives)?

Answer 19

Platter-Based Hard Drives

Question 20

T or F? A Hard Drive’s “RPM” has no effect on the heat generated.

Answer 20

False.

Question 21

What size partition does NTFS support by default?

Answer 21

16 TB

Question 22

Describe Raid 0

Answer 22

1. Striping
2. Minimum of 2 drives.
3. 0 Redundancy. Lose 1 disk= Lose entire data
4. Data is written across multiple Hard Drives.
5. High performance.

Question 23

Describe Raid 1

Answer 23

1. Mirroring
2. Files are duplicated between disks
3. Minimum of 2 Drives
4. High redundancy. Drive failure does not affect data availability.
5. High disk space utilization.

Question 24

Describe Raid 5

Answer 24

1. Striping with Parity.
2. At least 3 drives.
3. Files aren’t duplicated, but space is used for parity.
4. High redundancy.
5. If disk is lost, can be recreated using the parity bit.

Question 25

Describe Raid 6

Answer 25

1. Striping with extra parity bit.

2. Needs at least 5 drives.

Question 26

Describe Raid 10 (1+0)

Answer 26

1. A Stripe of Mirrored disks.
2. Minimum of 4 drives.
3. Stripes file blocks across mirrored drives
4. High redundancy.

Question 27

Raid level 5 continues to operate, even after a drive fails. T or F?

Answer 27

False.

Question 28

The /R switch of the CHKDSK utility does what?

Answer 28

1. Locates bad sectors and recovers readable information

2. Fixes errors on the disk

Question 29

The /F switch of the CHKDSK utility does what?

Answer 29

Fixes errors on the disk