Chapter 9: Implementing Mass Storage

82 flashcards · Other · by Ian Christensen

1. Mass Storage

   Permanent peripheral storage, which is typically a hard disk drive or solid state drive (SSD). It may also refer to a magnetic tape library. Mass storage is an older term that refers to ordinary storage, which was always larger (more "massive") than main memory (RAM). See storage vs. memory. If the term is used today, it means a huge amount of storage such as in a server array and not the capacity found in a single computer or server (see RAID array). See flash memory, magnetic disk, optical di…

2. Partition

   A reserved part of a storage drive (hard disk, SSD) that is treated as a separate drive. Even a single drive that takes all the storage space is assigned a partition. For example, early Windows PCs came with the entire disk partitioned as drive C:. New Windows PCs often come with the storage drive partitioned into C: and D:. The main drive is C:, and D: contains a recovery system in the event Windows has to be re-installed. In addition, users may wish to have several drives for organizational p…

3. Operating System Partition

4. Windows Swap File

   A disk file used by Windows for its virtual memory. A virtual memory system temporarily stores segments of the application on disk when there is not enough RAM to hold all the programs being used. The swap file in Windows is PAGEFILE.SYS, the size of which can be adjusted in the system control panel.

5. Linux Swap Partition

6. Recovery Partition

7. Mounted Partition

8. What are the most common partitions?

   Operating System Partition Recovery Partition Linux Swap Partition

9. What is the C partition typically reserved for?

10. What is the D partition typically reserved for?

11. What is the E partition typically reserved for?

12. What is the F partition typically reserved for?

13. What is the C partition typically reserved for?

14. What is the /dev/sda partition typically reserved for?

15. What is the /dev/sdb partition typically reserved for?

16. What is the /dev/sdc partition typically reserved for?

17. What is the /dev/sdd partition typically reserved for?

18. What is MBR?

    Master Boot Record is the first sector of the primary storage partition in a BIOS-based computer. The MBR contains a small program and the partition table. When the program is executed, it determines which partition contains the active operating system and branches to the boot program in that partition's boot sector to load it.

19. What is LBA?

    Logical Block Addressing is the way storage drives are accessed by a single sector number rather than by the earlier cylinder, head and sector (CHS) method. LBA was introduced in the early 1990s to support ATA/IDE drives as they reached 500MB, and Enhanced BIOSs in the PC translated CHS addressing into LBA. Subsequent ATA specifications raised support to 8.4GB, 128GB and 128PB (petabytes), the latter capacity we hope never to reach on our home PC in many lifetimes.

20. Where is the MBR stored?

    LBA 0

21. What is the Boot Loader?

    A small program that calls the operating system into memory (RAM) after the power is turned on. The boot loader may reside in the boot sector of the hard drive (or SSD) or in a chip. In more secure systems, the boot loader may load a second-level boot program, which then loads the operating system. Sometimes, the boot loader and boot manager, which enables one of several operating systems to be selected, are combined in the same program.

22. What is the maximum size and number of MBR partitions?

    4 partitions per drive with up to 2 TB per partition

23. What application on Windows is used to view and edit partitions?

    Disk Management

24. What is another name for a partition on Windows?

    Volume or Disk

25. What is an Extended Partition?

    The BIOS firmware and MBR partition tables in DOS and Windows PCs requires that an extended partition be used when more than four drives are assigned to the same physical disk. After the extended partition is created, "logical drives" are formatted, and drive letters are assigned.

26. What is a Primary Partition?

    A reserved part of a Windows disk, which is identified by a drive letter. The entire C: drive is often one primary partition; however, multiple partitions are created for a user's own organizational purposes or for booting into different operating systems.

27. What is a Logical Drive, Logical Volume, or Logical Partition?

    Logical Drive An allocated part of a physical disk drive that is designated and managed as an independent unit. For example, drives C:, D: and E: on a Windows PC can represent three physical drives or one physical drive partitioned into three logical drives. Logical Volume An allocation of storage that is less than or more than one physical drive. For example, drive C: and D: on a Windows PC might be two logical volumes on disk drive 0. Logical Partition LPAR is a logical segmentation of a main…

28. If the maximum number of partitions is reached how do you create more partitions anyway?

    You create a Logical Drive, Logical Volume, or Logical Partition

29. What is GPT?

    GUID Partition Table is the format used to define the hard disk partitions in computers with UEFI startup firmware. The GUID Partition Table (GPT) replaces the previous master boot record (MBR) method. While the MBR supported partitions as large as 2.2TB, GPT partitions can be up to 18 exabytes. GPT supports a "protective" MBR so that third-party MBR utilities can identify the disk correctly, as well as a "legacy" MBR if the first partition must boot as an MBR drive.

30. What is a GUID?

    Globally Unique IDentifier is an implementation of the universally unique ID (see UUID) that is computed by Windows and Windows applications. Using a pseudo-random 128-bit number, GUIDs are used to identify user accounts, documents, software, hardware, software interfaces, sessions, database keys and other items. First developed to keep track of instances of COM objects, GUIDs were created by an algorithm that used the MAC address of the local Ethernet card. Microsoft later dropped the Ethernet…

31. What is the maximum size and number of GPT partitions?

    128 partitions per drive with up to 18.8m terabytes per partition

32. If there are primary partitions or extended partitions then which partition style is it?

    MBR

33. If there aren't any primary partitions or extended partitions then which partition style is it?

    GPT

34. What are the two main partition styles?

    MBR and GPT

35. Which partition style is predominately used by Windows?

    GPT

36. What is a Protective MBR?

    The Protective MBR, beginning in sector 0, precedes the GUID Partition Table partition table on the disk. The MBR contains one type 0xEE partition that spans the entire length of the disk. This is the same regardless of the number of partitions that are defined in the GUID Partition Table disk entry array.

37. What is a Primary GPT Header?

38. What is a Secondary GPT Header?

39. What is LBA 0 reserved for?

    The Boot Loader and Protective MBR

40. What is LBA 1 reserved for?

    Primary GPT Header

41. What is LBA 2 reserved for?

    Secondary GPT Header

42. What is a good analogy for a drive, partition, and file format?

    House, rooms, and shelves/filing cabinet

43. What is a FAT?

    File Allocation Table is the file system used for compatibility. Developed for floppy disks in the late 1970s, FAT was the primary file system for hard drives in DOS and Windows prior to NTFS. FAT is also used for digital camera storage. See file system and NTFS. Today, FAT32 and exFAT are widely used for USB drives as well as external storage drives because they are supported by all major platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux and mobile devices. An external drive formatted as FAT is interch…

44. What is FAT32?

    File Allocation Table32 is the 32-bit version of the FAT file system. Employed on Windows PCs prior to the more advanced NTFS file system, the FAT32 format is widely used for USB drives, flash memory cards and external hard drives for compatibility between all platforms. However, the exFAT file system extends the maximum file size from 4GB to virtually unlimited (see exFAT). More Advanced than FAT16 Introduced in 1996, FAT32 increased capacities (see below) and supported 255-character names (se…

45. What is the difference between FAT, FAT16, and FAT32?

46. What do all zeros indicate in the FAT architecture?

    Open space

47. What do four F's indicate in the FAT architecture?

    End of file

48. What is Fragmentation?

    Storing data in non-contiguous areas on disk. As files are updated, new data are stored in available free space, which may not be contiguous. Fragmented files cause extra head movement, slowing disk accesses. A defragger program is used to rewrite and reorder all the files.

49. What is Defragmentation?

    To reorganize the disk by putting files into contiguous order. Because the operating system stores new data in whatever free space is available, data files become spread out across the disk as they are updated. Large files may be broken into thousands of fragments, causing the read/write head to move back and forth numerous extra times to read the data. A "defragger" or "optimizer program" rewrites all the files and stores them in adjacent sectors. Windows comes with the DEFRAG.EXE utility, whi…

50. What is a File System?

    The software and method for storing and retrieving files on a disk, SSD or USB drive. A file system is a major component of the operating system (OS). Applications command the OS to input and output data, and the file system reads and writes the sectors on the storage drive. The file system manages the folder/directory structure and provides an index to the files. It also defines the syntax used for the "path" to the files. File systems dictate how files are named as well as the maximum size of…

51. What size volumes and files does FAT32 support?

    8 TiB volumes with files as large as 4 GiB

52. What size volumes and files does NTFS support?

    16 EiB volumes with files as large as 256 TiB

53. What is an MFT?

    Master File Table is the list of files and folders in an NTFS volume. It contains the name, size, time and date, etc. for each file and folder. Since MFT records are 1KB in length, small files may be stored entirely within the MFT itself.

54. What are the most common file system formats?

    FAT32 ExFAT NTFS CDFS HFS

55. What file system is predominately used by Windows?

    NTFS

56. What are some benefits of NTFS?

    Master File Table (MFT) u.c. Compression u.c. Encryption Security Compatible on most Operating System

57. What is a drawback to NTFS?

    The file system is very large and ends up being overkill for thumb drives and other small storage devices

58. What features does ExFAT have?

    Does have: The same capacity as NTFS Does not have: Compression Encryption Security Compatibility

59. CDFS

    Compact Disk File System A standard CD-ROM file system. Evolving from the earlier High Sierra specification, ISO 9660 specifies the directory format of the disc, while the physical format is defined in the Yellow Book. ISO 9660 provides for read-only interoperability between Windows, Mac and Unix platforms. ISO 9660 Levels Level-1 guarantees the most interoperability, but requires file names to be upper case and limited to eight characters with a three-character extension similar to DOS file na…

60. What file system is the standard for optical media?

    Compact Disk File System (CDFS)

61. What size volumes and files does CDFS support?

    with files as big as 4 GiB

62. What is the ext family of file systems?

    EXTended file system is the first file system developed exclusively for the Linux operating system. Introduced in 1992, the limits of the Minix file system originally used in Linux were greatly increased: volume size from 64MB to 2GB, and file names from 14 to 255 characters. Ext also introduced a virtual file system (VFS) interface, which allows different underlying architectures to be used. ext2, ext3, ext4 In 1993, ext2 added the traditional Unix inode and other features of the Unix File Sys…

63. What file systems are predominately used on Linux?

    ext3 and ext4

64. What size volumes and files does ext3 support?

    32 TiB volumes with files up to 2 GiB

65. What size volumes and files does ext4 support?

    2 EiB volumes with files up to 16 TiB

66. What file system is predominately used by MacOS?

    Hierarchical File System Plus (HFS+)

67. What is HFS+?

    Hierarchical File System is the previous Mac file system. Although superseded by the Apple File System (see APFS), Macs still format, read and write HFS drives. See APFS. The first HFS version (Mac OS Standard) was introduced in 1985. HFS+ (Mac OS Extended) came out in 1998 in preparation for Mac OS X, featuring Unicode support and a dramatically increased file size from 2GB to 16TB. In 2003, journaling was added (see journaling file system), and case-sensitive file names were introduced under…

68. What size volumes and files does HFS+ support?

    8 EiB volumes with files up to 8 EiB

69. What is a Dynamic Disk?

    A Windows hard disk configuration that supports RAID architectures for high performance and fault tolerance, as well as spanning (treating multiple physical disks as one). Striping (RAID 0) splits the data onto several disks for performance, and RAID 1 and RAID 5 provide fault tolerance using different methods (see RAID).

70. What are some features of Dynamic Disk?

    Shrink the drive Expand the drive Spanning drives Only on Windows

71. What is a Basic Disk?

    The common hard disk configuration in a Windows computer. The disk is divided into primary partitions and, optionally, an extended partition.

72. What is a Spanned Volume or Drive?

73. What does CompTIA recommend doing?

    Keep the boot drive basic (not dynamic) Set boot drive to GPT It's easy to create a dynamic drive, but hard to revert

74. What application is used on Windows to manage RAID?

    Storage Spaces

75. What is Window's proprietary RAID?

    Three-way Mirror

76. What is Software RAID?

    Providing increased disk performance and/or fault tolerance via software.

77. What are the two encryption types used in mass storage?

    File-based encryption Disk-based encryption

78. What is EFS?

    Encrypting File System is an encryption system in the Windows NTFS file system, starting with Windows XP Pro. EFS enables users to encrypt their data in storage with the use of a password. EFS vs. BitLocker Two encryption systems come with Windows. EFS works at the file level, and users decide which files to encrypt. In contrast, BitLocker encrypts everything on the drive. See BitLocker. Double Encryption EFS encrypts files with a symmetric key that is itself encrypted with the user's public ke…

79. What is Bitlocker?

    BitLocker A utility in Windows, starting with Vista, that encrypts the entire contents of the storage drive (hard disk or SSD). If the computer's motherboard has a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip, the operation is entirely transparent to the user. Non-TPM Operation If the motherboard does not have a TPM chip, BitLocker can be used in two ways. In User Authentication Mode, a PIN or password must be entered when the computer is turned on. In USB Key Mode, either a USB drive or a smart card wit…

80. What is an example of file-based encryption?

    EFS

81. What is an example of disk-based encryption?

    Bitlocker

82. What is TPM?

    Trusted Platform Module is a security chip from the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) that is typically built into the motherboard of a PC. It provides secure key generation by generating a private key that is stored in the chip and cannot be divulged to hackers.