Learning unit 5

Question 1

What is HDD rated by?

Answer 1

-Its physical size
-Capacity
-Speed
-Technologies used inside
-Interface standards

Question 2

What type of technologies are used in HDDs?

Answer 2

-Magnetic
-Solid state

Question 3

Describe a magnetic hard Drive

Answer 3

One or more disks stacked together, spinning in unison inside a sealed metal housing

Question 4

What is the role of firmware?

Answer 4

It controls data reading, writing and motherboard communication

Question 5

Describe a solid state drive

Answer 5

-It has no moving parts
-Its non-volatile
-Memory is NAND flash
-Its more expensive

Question 6

Describe a Hybrid HDD or Solid State hard drive

Answer 6

It contains magnetic and solid state technologies and it permanently holds data

Question 7

What is the role of S.M.A.R.T?

Answer 7

To predict when a drive is likely to fail

Question 8

What does S.M.A.R.T stand for?

Answer 8

Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology

Question 9

What does system BIOS/UEFI use S.M.A.R.T for?

Answer 9

To monitor disk spin time and the mechanical activities of the drive

Question 10

What does S.M.A.R.T do when a drive is about to fail?

Answer 10

It displays a warning message

Question 11

List the interface standards used by hard drives

Answer 11

-SATA
-NVMe
-SCSI
-IDE

Question 12

What should you consider when selecting a hard drive

Answer 12

-Technology
-Form factor
-Data transfer
-Spindle speed
-Buffer size
-Capacity

Question 13

Explain RAID ( Redundant array of inexpensive disks)

Answer 13

Its a technology that configures two or more disks to work together as an array of drives

Question 14

Why do people use RAID?

Answer 14

To increase performance and increase fault tolerance

Question 15

List the type of RAID variations

Answer 15

-RAID 0
-RAID 1
-RAID 10
-RAID 5
-SPANNING (JBOD)

Question 16

Explain RAID 0 (stripped volume)

Answer 16

Uses 2 or more disks to increase the disk space available for a single volume

-It writes evenly on physical disks so that neither receives all activity thus improving performance

Question 17

Explain RAID 1 (mirrored volume)

Answer 17

It duplicates data on 1 drive to another and is used for fault tolerance

-Each drive has its own volume and the 2 volumes are called mirrors

-If one drive fails the other continues to operate and data is not lost

Question 18

Explain RAID 5

Answer 18

It stripes data across drives and uses parity checking

-If one drive fails the others re-create the data stored on the failed drive by using the information

-Data isn’t duplicated so it makes better use of volume capacity

-It increases performance and fault tolerance

Question 19

Explain Spanning

Answer 19

Uses 2 hard drives and when 1 fails the other is used

-The purpose is to increase the amount of disk space available for a single disk volume

Question 20

Explain RAID 10`

Answer 20

Its a combination of RAID 1 & 0.
-It takes at least 4 disks
-Data is mirrored across pairs of disks