Storage and Memory

Question 1

What are Hard Disk Drives?

Answer 1

Storage device containing a series of spinning rigid metal platters. Data is read and written using a r/w head moving other the spinning plates.

Question 2

How do Hard Disk Drives store data?

Answer 2

Magnetically?

Question 3

What internal interfaces are used to connect with HDD?

Answer 3

• IDE
• SATA
• SCSI

Question 4

What external interfaces are used to connect with HDD?

Answer 4

• USB
• eSATA
• SCSI
• SAS

Question 5

What are some characteristics of HDD/magnetic drives?

Answer 5

• Rotational speed
• Form Factors

Question 6

What are the different form factors for HDD (Magnetic Drives)

Answer 6

2.5” (Small Form Factor)
3.5”

Question 6

What increases are the rotational speed (RPM) of Magnetic Drives increases?

Answer 6

The read write speed

Question 7

What forms of security is there for HDD?

Answer 7

• HDD password
• TPM module

Question 8

What is a HDD password?

Answer 8

A password required before boot to grant access to a HDD

Question 9

What do Solid State Drives not have that HDD do?

Answer 9

SSDs have no mechanical moving parts

Question 10

What are Solid State Drives

Answer 10

Digital circuits and flash memory

Question 11

How does power draw of SSDs compare to HDDs?

Answer 11

SSDs have less power draw and noise compared to HDDs

Question 12

What are the different standards of SSDs?

Answer 12

• USB thumb drives
• mSATA
• SD cards
• PCIe Card

Question 13

What is an mSATA?

Answer 13

Small form factor SSD drive

Question 14

What are Optical Storage Devices?

Answer 14

Lasers are used to read and write data from and to spinning disks.

Question 15

What is the drawback of Optical Storage Devices?

Answer 15

There’s a limited number of writes and you need the media and software to read/write data onto it

Question 16

What are some examples of optical drives and storage media?

Answer 16

CD/DVD/Blu-ray

Question 17

What is RAID?

Answer 17

A group of physical or virtual disks working together

Question 18

What is the benefit of RIAD?

Answer 18

• Increased performance and fault tolerance
• Disks can be hot-swappable

Question 19

What is a hot-swappable disk?

Answer 19

A disk that can be replaced whilst a system is running

Question 20

What controls a hardware RAID?

Answer 20

A physical RAID controller that is either embedded on the motherboard or available from an expansion card

Question 21

How is software RAI managed?

Answer 21

Using the OS, it has a component that can configure a RAID

Question 22

What is RAID 0?

Answer 22

Disk striping. Two physical disks where when you write data it is written across/stiped across two disks

Question 23

What are the characteristics of RAID 0?

Answer 23

• No fault tolerance
• Increased performance
• Appears as a single disk in the OS

Question 24

What is RAID 1?

Answer 24

Mirrored Volume. With a minimum of two disks, you make a disk write to one disk and the contents is copied to another.

Question 25

What are the characteristics of RAID 1?

Answer 25

- Fault tolerance - Increased read performance - Appears as a single disk in the OS - You are only utilising 50% of the total disk space

Question 26

What is RAID 5?

Answer 26

Striping with distributed Parity. 3 or more disks where Parity data is stored on a different disk to where the data is stored.

Question 27

What is parity data?

Answer 27

Recovery data and information

Question 28

What are the characteristics of RAID 5?

Answer 28

- Fault tolerance of one disk in the array - Used in servers - Increased performance

Question 29

What is RAID 10?

Answer 29

RAID 1 + RAID 0 - Combines mirroring and striping - Requires four disks

Question 30

What is Network Attached Storage?

Answer 30

Storage accessible over a standard IP network. Allows for file and folder sync and backup to cloud

Question 31

How is NAS devices accessed?

Answer 31

Via file sharing/streaming protocols such as Network File system (NFS).

Question 32

What are the characteristics of Network Attached Storage?

Answer 32

- Expandable capacity - Wi-Fi or wired - RAID capabilities - Encryption

Question 33

What is iSCSI storage?

Answer 33

a technology that allows servers to access block-level storage over a standard TCP/IP network

Question 34

What is a Storage Area Network?

Answer 34

Remote accessible storage as opposed to direct attached storage (DAS)

Question 35

What are some cloud storage considerations?

Answer 35

- Redundant internet connections - Automatic synchronization (instant or delayed) - Use case - Server-side encryption of data

Question 36

Is RAM volatile or non-voltaile?

Answer 36

Volatile, it relies on electricity/power

Question 37

What are the various RAM channels?

Answer 37

Single, dual, triple or quad channel. All about how many slots of RAM are available

Question 38

What increases as the channel increases for RAM?

Answer 38

The memory throughput or bandwidth of getting data in and out of memory

Question 39

What do motherboards determine about RAM?

Answer 39

How much physical RAM you can instal and the type

Question 40

What is Parity RAM?

Answer 40

Uses a 9th error checking bit for every byte of memory

Question 41

What is non-parity RAM?

Answer 41

No 9th parity bit

Question 42

Does parity RAM correct issues?

Answer 42

No it only checks for them, Error correcting code does that

Question 43

What is ECC?

Answer 43

Error correcting code, a type of ram that detects and corrects common memory corruption issues.

Question 44

What type of RAM does mobile devices like laptops use?

Answer 44

SODIMM

Question 45

What is SODIMM RAM?

Answer 45

Small RAM chips used in laptops

Question 46

What is DDR RAM?

Answer 46

Double data rate. Determined by motherboard RAM slots

Question 47

What is the speed for DDR3?

Answer 47

17 GB/s throughput, getting data in and out of memory

Question 48

What is the speed for DDR4?

Answer 48

25 GB/s throughput, getting data in and out of memory

Question 49

What is the speed of DDR5?

Answer 49

32 GB/s throughput, getting data in and out of memory