Module 03 - Different Types of Disk Drives and their Characteristics

What is a non-volatile, digital data storage device used in a computer system?

Hard disk drive (HDD)

What are the concentric circles on platters where all the information is stored?

Hard disk drive tracks

Each track contains numerous smaller units called________ and all platters in an HDD have the same track density.

Sectors

What on a hard disk begins at 0 from the outer edge and moves towards the center? The number of tracks on a hard disk depends on the size of the disk.

Hard disk drive track numbering

A what is a group of all tracks that start at the same head position on a hard disk drive track numbering?

Cylinder

Hard disk drive racks contain smaller divisions called _______which are the smallest physical storage units on a hard-disk platter

Hard disk drive sectors

A __________ is a mathematical term denoting a pie-shaped or angular part of a circle, and it is enclosed by the perimeter of the circle and two radii.

Hard disk drive sector

What normally stores 512 bytes of data for HDDs and 2048 bytes for CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs; the latest HDDs use sectors of 4096 bytes (4 KB), with additional bytes utilized for internal drive control, information that aids data storage, and error detection and correction?

Hard disk drive sectors

All the _________ between two concentric circles form a track.

Hard disk drive sectors

What contents of a hard disk drive sector contains the sector number and location, which identify sectors on the disk? It also contains status information on the sector.

ID information

What contents of a hard disk drive sector involves the drive controller driving the read process using these fields?

Synchronization fields

What contents of a hard disk drive sector involves information stored on the sector?

Data

What contents of a hard disk drive sector involves code ensuring the integrity of the

data?

Error correction coding (ECC)

What contents of a hard disk drive sector involves spaces used to provide time for the controller to continue the read process?

Gaps

True or False: New hard drives use advanced-format sectors of 4096 bytes (4 KB or 4K).

True

Hard disks store data using the ____________, which is also known as multiple zone recording.

Zoned bit recording method

What technique tracks form a collection of zones depending on their distance from the disk center, and outer tracks have more sectors than inner tracks?

Zoned bit recording

What term related to the data density on a hard disk refers to the space required by a particular number of tracks on a disk? Disks with a greater ________can store more information and offer better performance.

Track density

What term related to the data density on a hard disk refers to the number of bits per square inch on a platter, and it represents the amount of data a hard disk can hold?

Areal density

What term related to the data density on a hard disk refers to the number of bits a unit length of track can accommodate?

Bit density

What is the technique of assigning addresses to physical blocks of data on HDDs?

Hard-disk data addressing

What identifies individual sectors on a hard disk according to their positions in a track, and the head and cylinder numbers determine these tracks? It associates information on the hard drive by specifications such as the head (platter side), cylinder (radius), and sector (angular position).

The Cylinder–Head–Sector (CHS) process

Measuring hard disk drive performance includes calculation of its two characteristics

including the _____________

Access time and data transfer rate

What hard disk performance refers to the time taken by a drive to initiate data transfer? This time depends on the mechanical nature of rotating disks and moving heads.

Access time

What hard disk performance is required for a hard-disk controller to find a particular piece of data? When reading or writing data, the disk heads move to the correct position through the process of seeking.

Seek time

What hard disk performance refers to the rotational delay in the chosen disk sector to rotate under read or write disk-drive heads?

Rotational latency

What hard disk performance is expressed by the internal rate, which is the rate of data transfer between the disk surface and drive controller, as well as the external rate, which is the rate of data transfer between the drive controller and host system?

Data transfer rate

What is an electronic data storage device that implements solid-state memory technology to store data in a manner similar to an HDD?

Solid state drive (SSD)

True or False: In electronics, the term “solid state” refers to an electronic circuit built entirely with semiconductors.

True

Which of the following SSD memory uses solid-state NAND memory microchips to store data?

NAND-based SSDs

Which of the following is is non-volatile in nature and retains memory even without power and the data in these microchips are in a non-volatile state and do not need any moving parts?

NAND memory

Which of the following SSD memory is based on volatile memory such as dynamic RAM (DRAM) and is used when applications require fast data access?

Volatile RAM-based SSDs

Which of the following SSDs include either an internal chargeable battery or an external AC/DC adapter, as well as backup storage?

Volatile RAM-based SSDs

Which of the following is a major advantage of SSD over magnetic hard drives?

Faster data access

Which of the following is a major advantage of SSD over magnetic hard drives?

Lower power usage

Which of the following is a major advantage of SSD over magnetic hard drives?

Higher reliability

What component of SSD uses non-volatile storage technology to store data and consists of floating gate transistors that do not require power to retain data?

NAND flash memory

What component of SSD is an embedded processor that acts as a bridge between the flash memory components and the system by executing firmware-level software?

Controller

What component of SSD is a volatile memory and requires power to retain data and

is included in an SSD to increase its read/write performance?

DRAM

What component of SSD is based on performance requirements, various host interfaces are used in SSDs?

Host interface

Which of the following are commonly used SSD host interfaces?

Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA)

Which of the following are commonly used SSD host interfaces?

Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe)

Which of the following are commonly used SSD host interfaces?

SCSI (Small Computer System Interface)

What disk interface is a standard electronic interface used between a computer motherboard’s data paths or bus and the computer’s storage devices, such as HDDs, SSDs, and CD-ROM/DVD drives?

IDE (Integrated Development Environment)

What is the base for the IDE interface, which offers connectivity in computers that use other bus standards. The official IDE of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is the Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA)?

IBM PC Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) 16-bit bus standard

What disk interface is based on parallel signaling technology, offers a controller on the disk drive itself and thereby eliminates the need for a separate adaptor card?

Parallel ATA (PATA)

What standards only allow cable lengths up to 46 cm (18 in)?

Parallel ATA (PATA)

What disk interface has computers sold today use an enhanced version of IDE?

Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics (EIDE).

What is an extension to the IDE interface that supports the ATA-2 and ATA Packet

Interface (ATAPI) standards?

Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics (EIDE).

What can address a hard disk larger than 528 Mbytes, allows quick access to the hard drive, and provides support for direct memory access (DMA) and additional drives such as tape devices and CD-ROM drives?

Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics (EIDE).

What disk interface offers a point-to-point channel between the

motherboard and drive?

Serial ATA (SATA)

What are the following features of SATA?

High operation speed

What are the following features of SATA?

Easy to connect to storage devices

What are the following features of SATA?

Easy to configure

What are the following features of SATA?

Transfers data at a rate of 1.5 Gbps (SATA revision 1.0) and 6 Gbps

(SATA revision 3)

What disk interface is a set of ANSI standard electronic interfaces that allow personal computers to communicate with peripheral hardware such as disk drives, tape drives, CD-ROM drives, printers, and scanners?

SCSI

What disk interface was adopted by Apple computer, Inc. and is still used in Macintosh?

SCSI

What is more flexible than earlier parallel data transfer interfaces and allows up to 7 or 15 devices (depending on the bus width) to be connected to a single SCSI port in a daisy-chain fashion?

SCSI

What disk interface is is a point-to-point serial protocol that handles data flow among computer storage devices such as HDDs and tape drives?

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)

What is the successor to Parallel SCSI and uses the standard SCSI command set?

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)

What disk interface is a high-speed serial expansion card that integrates flash directly into the motherboard? These devices connect to the host machine through its own serial link by eliminating the need to share a bus, reducing latency, and enhancing the data transfer speeds between a server and storage.

PCIe SSD

What disk interface is ideal for applications such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, gaming, visual computing, storage, and networking?

PCIe 5.0

What SSD storage protocol is a storage protocol developed for NAND flash memory and high-performance SSDs that use PCIe card slot technology?

Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe)

What is the file system and software utilized to control access to the storage on the disk?

The logical structure of a hard disk

True or False: The logical structure of the hard disk directly influences the consistency, performance, compatibility, and expandability of the storage subsystems of the hard disk?

True

What are the smallest accessible storage units on a hard disk?

Clusters

What are formed by combining sectors to ease the process of handling files?

Clusters

Also called allocation units, ___________ are sets of tracks and sectors ranging from cluster number 2 to 32 or higher, depending on the formatting scheme.

Clusters

The process by which files are allocated to clusters is called______; therefore, _________ are also known as allocation units

Allocation and Clusters

Every ________ is a continuous chunk of space on the hard disk.

Cluster

In a _________, when the file system stores a file smaller than the cluster size, the extra space gets wasted and is called slack space.

Cluster

What has a significant impact on the performance of an OS and disk utilization?

Cluster sizing

What determines the size of a cluster, and larger volumes use larger cluster sizes? The system can change the cluster size of an existing partition to enhance performance

Disk partitioning

A large cluster size (greater than one sector) has which of the follwing effects?

Minimizes the fragmentation problem

A large cluster size (greater than one sector) has which of the follwing effects?

Increases the probability of unused space in the cluster

A large cluster size (greater than one sector) has which of the follwing effects?

Reduces the disk storage area in which information can be saved

A large cluster size (greater than one sector) has which of the follwing effects?

Reduces the unused area on the disk

What is a File Allocation Table (FAT) error that occurs when the OS marks clusters as used but does not allocate any file to them?

Lost cluster

What is mainly the result of a logical structure error and not a physical disk error?

Lost cluster

What occurs when the user does not close files properly or shuts down a computer without closing an application? These errors also occur owing to disk corruptions such as bad drivers and resource conflicts.

Lost clusters

True or False: Disk-checking programs can examine a complete disk volume for lost clusters. To detect lost clusters, one can use a program that can save them as a file or clear them.

True

What is a system tool in Windows that authenticates the file system reliability of a volume and repairs logical file system errors?

CHDSK

Which of the following Disk-checking programs can scan the computer system for lost clusters from a certain procedure?

A duplicate copy is generated in the memory of FAT while noting all of the clusters marked as “in use.”

Which of the following Disk-checking programs can scan the computer system for lost clusters from a certain procedure?

Beginning from the root directory, the clusters utilized by a file are traced and marked as “accounted for” to connect them to the file. This procedure is repeated for all the subdirectories.

Which of the following Disk-checking programs can scan the computer system for lost clusters from a certain procedure?

Lost clusters or “orphan” clusters are marked in the FAT as being used but have no link to any file.

What is a built-in Windows utility that helps detect errors in the file system and disk media?

Chkdsk.exe or Check Disk

What should be used in the case of issues such as blue screens and difficulty to open or save files or folders? This utility also checks for bad sectors and lost clusters.

Check Disk utility

List the steps to use the command-line version of the Check Disk utility.

Open Command Prompt by typing cmd in the Run utility, Enter chkdsk in Command Prompt to run the Check Disk utility in the, read-only mode, After completing a scan, the Check Disk utility will display the status of the current drive

What is the wasted area of a disk cluster lying between the end of a file and the end of the cluster; it is created when the file system allocates a full cluster to a file smaller than the cluster size?

Slack space

Which of the following slack types is the data storage space that starts from the end of a file to the end of the last sector of the file?

RAM slack

Which of the following slack types is the data storage space that starts from the end of the last sector of a file to the end of the last cluster of the file?

Drive slack

Often, _______ can contain relevant suspect information required by a prosecutor to present as evidence in court.

Slack space

What refers to a hard disk’s first sector or sector zero, which specifies the location of an OS for the system to load into the main storage?

Master Boot Record (MBR)

What is also called the partition sector or master partition table as it contains a table that locates partitioned disk data. A program in the record loads the rest of the OS into the RAM?

Master Boot Record (MBR)

What file contains information about various files present on the disk, their locations, and sizes. In practice, _______ almost always refers to the 512- byte boot sector or partition sector of a disk?

Master Boot Record (MBR)

What is the Master Boot Record (MBR) used for?

Holding a partition table which refers to the partitions of a hard disk

What is the Master Boot Record (MBR) used for?

Bootstrapping an OS

What is the Master Boot Record (MBR) used for?

Distinctively recognizing individual hard disk media with a 32-bit disk signature

The Master Boot Record (MBR) consists of which of the following structures?

Partition Table

The Master Boot Record (MBR) consists of which of the following structures?

Master Boot Code