Troubleshooting Storage Devices Flashcards
1
Q
Boot Device
A
- SSD/ HD
- REmoveable media CD/DVD
- Network
- ETC
2
Q
Boot Issues
A
- If your system cannot find a bootable device it will get an error to screen that says (All indicate the same thing) “Boot Device Not Found” or “OS not found,” or Operating system not found” or “Invalid drive specification
- To Solve go into BIOS/UEFI of device and look at your boot order.
- Here you can dictate the priorityhow you want devices to boot and in which order
- Here you can check if the if the devices are recognized by your computer inside UEFI/ BIOS
- IF not recognized this can indicate the device is not connected to Motherboard properly or there is not enough power supplied to it (CHeck connected)
- if they are properly connected and has right amount of power then it could be a boot secter issue
- When looking at a storage device if it’s being detected by the UEFI/BIOS properly but your not able to find a bootable device that usually indicates that there is a issues with the MBR or GPT
- Having the boot priority incorrectly set
- You always want to be able to see if your internal storage device isoperating properly by looking, listening, and feeling
- Looking (LED activity light should be blinking
- doesnt work if dealing with SSD but will work with HD Listening and feeling. Can feel if movieng cause it will move. CAn listing to it spinning (Can indicate not properly recognized or powered)
3
Q
Boot Sector
A
- Is the first area thats going to be read from the UEFI/ BIOS when you’re booting up the system
- Helps system determin what the PArtitions are on the stroage device so it can assign drive letters to it and interact with those particitions
4
Q
MBR
A
- Master Boot Record (MBR)
- definition
- Stored in the first sector of the first partition of that storage device
- Srtores information about all the partitions in the first sector of the storage device and information about location of the first bootable partition which is going to have the active boot sector
- If using the MBR type system
- Boot up system
- Its going to read the first sector
- get information about the partitions
- Figure out where that active boot sector is
- move to active boot sector to find and load an OS using a boot loader
5
Q
GPT
A
- GUID (Globally Unique ID) Partition Table (GPT)
-Specialized boot scheme with modern advantages - Used in modern systems
- LArger partitions than MBR
- Dont have to boot from the first partition like MBR
- WHen dealing with GPT boot schema, your not restricted to that single sector and can save that boot information on any of the different partitions thatr you want and be able to have a different way of identitfying partitions and instead can move that boot information to other areas on the HD
6
Q
Boot Loader
A
- Windows (Boot Configuration Data (BCD) (Store info about WIndows system and boot it up)
- Linux (GRUB/LILO)
7
Q
Partition on a storage device
A
- The logical part of an entire drive (SSD or HD)
- Each part is called a partition
- Taking an entire drive (SSD or HD) and splitting it up into multiple logical parts
- Single partition
- Multiple partitions
- Windows (Single)
- Linux (Multiple)
8
Q
Format storage devices boot information (Two Types)
A
- MAster Boot Record (MBR)
-GUID Partition Table (GPT)
9
Q
Trouble shooting a HD
A
Good
- Low level sound
Bad
- Clicking and grinding (Technical HD and back up immediately)
- Clicking (Usually Issue with read write head)
- Grinding (Read write head is pushing down too far into the platter and scrapping across the platter or could be platter it self and the bearings that allow it to spin are starting to fail
10
Q
Activity light on s storage device issue
A
- If the light is not blinking during read or write from the device this could indicate a problem with that device 9Could be faulty cabel from motherboard to device or device not getting enough power
- Constant blinking led light this means there is a lot of reading and writig going on. thus means not enough ram
- If you dont have aenough ram its going to use a temporary file on that storage device (Page file and Swap space) TO solve add more RAM
- Adding more physical memory will stop the disk from being used as a swap file or page file and this will reduce the load on that storage device
11
Q
Missing drive
A
- disk management to detect
- Check UEFI/ BIOS
- IF not UEFI or Disk management may be mechanical
12
Q
Read or write failure
A
- Error message “Cannot read fto source disk or cannot read to source disk” (usually means Bad sectors on HDD or bad blocks on SSD
13
Q
Sectors
HDDs
A
- Round platter is split into sectors
- Essentially a small sliver or slice of HD. this allows to read/write to particular areas of that HD by Identifying the sector and the track within that sector and track within sectoe that we want to write the information but if you have bad sector that means it’s unusable and we cant write to it. if you already stored data there that means you may not be able to read from there again either (Data loss/ corruption) when this occurs you will have to use a disk utility within OS to beable to idnetify which sectors are bad and then try to recover or get information off and move to a different sector (Windows or Linux (Checkdsk perform for you))
14
Q
Blocks
SSD
A
- SSDs identify bad blocks
- If SSD have bad blocks they willuse spare blocks at the end of the SSD and move that information over so you can still read and write from it unless the data is already loss and corrupted
- eventually will run out of spare blocks and when it doesthe SSDs firmware will no longer be able to allocate or compensate into these space blocks because there are no more (eventually will have to backup data and replace device
15
Q
Best practices
A
- Aways have a good backup at all times
at a minimum do a full backup every single weeK
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