SLR 03 - Input, Output and Storage

Question 1

What is an input device?

Answer 1

Any device that allows a user to put information from the outside world into a computer system.

Question 2

What is an output device?

Answer 2

Any device that can take data stored and convert it into a format understood by humans.

Question 3

What is a storage device?

Answer 3

Any device used for either temporary or permanent storage of data.

Question 4

What is an optical drive?

Answer 4

A device consisting of lands and pit read by firing lasers at the disc.

Question 5

What are the positives of an Optical Drive?

Answer 5

It is Cheap, Portable and lightweight

Question 6

What are the negatives of an Optical Drive?

Answer 6

It is slow to access and prone to scratches.

Question 7

What is a Magnetic Drive?

Answer 7

A drive consisting of polarised magnets that is read by moving a drive head over the surface to read stored data.

Question 8

What are the positives of magnetic storage?

Answer 8

It is relatively cheap and high capacity

Question 9

What are the negatives of magnetic storage?

Answer 9

Slower access times, fragile

Question 10

What is a Solid State Drive?

Answer 10

A solid state drive has charges, when a current is run through it electrons are forced between 2 Oxide layers to symbolise Binary.

Question 11

What are the positives of Flash storage?

Answer 11

It is durable and fast

Question 12

What are the negatives of Flash Storage?

Answer 12

It has a limited number of read / write cycles
It is expensive

Question 13

What are examples of Optical storage?

Answer 13

CD-R
DVD-R
Blu-Ray

Question 14

What are examples of Magnetic storage?

Answer 14

Hard Disk Drive
Tapes / Cassettes

Question 15

What are examples of Solid State Storage?

Answer 15

Solid State Drive
Memory Sticks
Flash Memory Cards

Question 16

What does ROM stand for?

Answer 16

Read-Only Memory

Question 17

What are the purposes of ROM?

Answer 17

A small piece of storage on the motherboard
It is non-volatile
It contains the bootstrap

Question 18

What does RAM stand for?

Answer 18

Random-Access Memory

Question 19

What is the purpose of RAM?

Answer 19

Temporary storage of instructions and data
Holds information being executed by the processor
Volatile
Faster access than the HDD

Question 20

What is the bootstrap?

Answer 20

It is the initial startup instructions
It contains POST (The power on self test)
It sends signals to all components to be read by the CPU
This leads to the OS being loaded into RAM

Question 21

What is virtual storage?

Answer 21

Cloud storage, storing and retrieving data over the internet

Question 22

What are the positives of virtual storage?

Answer 22

Anytime access
Access from any device
Easily shared
Easy to collaborate on files
Storage is limitless from the users POV

Question 23

What are the negatives of virtual storage?

Answer 23

It can be expensive
With poor connection you have slow access
When you have no internet you can’t access your files