Mass-Storage Structure – 45 Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the purpose of the disk's rotational latency?

A) It measures the number of bytes transferred per second
B) It accounts for the time the desired sector rotates under the disk head
C) It calculates the disk's total capacity
D) It determines how many heads are in a drive
E) It checks for disk errors
2. Which of the following is NOT true about solid-state disks?
A) They have no moving parts
B) They are faster than magnetic disks
C) They have no seek time or rotational latency
D) They are cheaper per MB than magnetic disks
E) They may have a shorter lifespan
3. Which technology is commonly used for backup and offline storage due to slow access but high capacity?
A) Solid-state drive
B) Optical disk
C) Magnetic tape
D) Hard disk drive
E) USB drive
4. In the logical block addressing of a disk, sector 0 is located at:
A) The first sector of the first track on the outermost cylinder
B) The last sector of the innermost track
C) The first sector of the middle cylinder
D) The highest logical block
E) The boot block
5. What is the smallest unit of transfer on a disk called?
A) Byte
B) Logical block
C) Cluster
D) Page
E) Track
6. Which protocol allows SCSI communication over IP networks?
A) CIFS
B) NFS
C) iSCSI
D) HTTP
E) FTP
7. What is the main disadvantage of Shortest Seek Time First (SSTF) disk scheduling?
A) It causes high latency
B) It may lead to starvation of some requests
C) It is slower than FCFS
D) It moves the head randomly
E) It can only serve even-numbered requests
8. Which disk scheduling algorithm behaves like an elevator, changing direction at the end of the disk?
A) FCFS
B) SSTF
C) SCAN
D) LOOK
E) C-SCAN
9. What distinguishes C-SCAN from SCAN in disk scheduling?
A) It serves requests from both ends simultaneously
B) It services requests in one direction and jumps back without servicing
C) It only serves the outermost tracks
D) It chooses requests randomly
E) It works only with SSDs
10. What is the function of low-level formatting?
A) Dividing a disk into sectors readable by the controller
B) Organizing disk data into files
C) Creating disk partitions
D) Initializing system bootloader
E) Encrypting the disk
11. Which of the following is stored in the boot block of a disk?
A) Master File Table
B) Bootstrap loader program
C) Partition table
D) File system metadata
E) Virtual memory manager
12. What is a swap space primarily used for?
A) Disk formatting
B) Booting the system
C) Extending main memory using disk
D) Storing logs
E) Backing up user data
13. What is the main advantage of grouping blocks into clusters in file systems?
A) Easier booting
B) Better security
C) Increased efficiency in disk I/O
D) Logical formatting
E) More reliable hardware control
14. Which of the following busses is typically used in workstations and servers for storage?
A) USB
B) SATA
C) IDE
D) Fibre Channel (FC)
E) Firewire
15. Which disk scheduling algorithm is most likely to provide uniform wait time for requests?
A) FCFS
B) SSTF
C) SCAN
D) C-SCAN
E) LOOK
16. Which factor does NOT affect disk transfer rate?
A) Drive rotation speed
B) Bus bandwidth
C) File system format
D) Seek time
E) Rotational latency
17. What is a head crash in a hard disk drive?
A) When disk head loses power
B) When the disk head contacts the disk surface
C) When the motor fails
D) When data gets fragmented
18. What is the main drawback of magnetic tape compared to disk storage?
A) Slower access time
B) Smaller storage capacity
C) Higher cost per MB
D) Less reliability
E) Lower transfer rate
19. What kind of storage does a Network-Attached Storage (NAS) system offer?
A) Local drive access
B) File-level storage over a network
C) Raw block-level access
D) Optical media sharing
E) Swap-space expansion
20. Which of the following technologies is commonly used in NAS systems for file sharing?
A) HTTP
B) NFS and CIFS
C) SSL and TLS
D) FTP and SMTP
E) iSCSI
21. A SAN (Storage Area Network) differs from NAS in that SAN provides:
A) File-level storage over IP
B) Direct USB device access
C) Block-level storage over high-speed networks
D) Only SSD-based storage
E) Remote cloud replication only
22. Which of the following is NOT a valid disk I/O scheduling algorithm?
A) FCFS
B) SSTF
C) FIFO-RR
D) SCAN
E) C-SCAN
23. In disk scheduling, what does the queue depth refer to?
A) Number of I/O requests the controller can buffer
B) Number of cylinders per disk
C) Number of users accessing the disk
D) Number of platters on the disk
E) Disk head position accuracy
24. Which component of the system contains the bootstrap program?
A) Operating system
B) ROM
C) Disk cache
D) CPU registers
E) Disk controller
25. Which statement best defines low-level formatting?
A) Organizing data into file structures
B) Preparing a disk by marking sectors and tracks
C) Creating disk partitions
D) Mounting the file system
E) Compressing disk data
26. Why might sector sparing be used in disk management?
A) To handle bad sectors on the disk
B) To speed up formatting
C) To encrypt data
D) To increase RPM
27. Which of the following is typically true for magnetic tape compared to solid-state drives?
A) Faster access
B) Larger capacity and cheaper per byte
C) Higher durability
D) Suitable for frequent reads
E) Supports random I/O more efficiently
28. In the moving-head disk mechanism, the seek time is defined as:
A) Time to read the entire disk
B) Time to format a disk
C) Time to move the disk arm to desired cylinder
D) Time to transfer data to RAM
E) Time between two interrupts
29. What does the term “logical formatting” refer to in disk management?
A) Physical disk cleaning
B) Creating a file system on a partition
C) Updating BIOS settings
D) Sector realignment
E) Bootloader installation
30. What is a typical size for sectors used in disk drives?
A) 128 bytes
B) 1 KB
C) 512 bytes
D) 2 KB
E) 8 KB
31. What kind of I/O requests does the operating system manage in disk scheduling?
A) Only user read requests
B) Only system write requests
C) Both input and output with disk and memory addresses
D) Only block-level operations
E) Only sequential requests
32. Which bus type is common in high-performance desktops and servers?
A) USB 2.0
B) EIDE
C) SATA
D) SCSI or SAS
E) HDMI
33. Which of the following disk types allows direct connection to the PCI bus for performance reasons?
A) Solid-state drives (SSD)
B) Magnetic tape
C) Optical disk
D) NAS drives
E) USB flash drives
34. Which disk scheduling algorithm may cause starvation of some requests?
A) FCFS
B) SSTF
C) SCAN
D) C-SCAN
E) Round-Robin
35. What is the term for dividing a disk into sectors the controller can read/write?
A) Logical formatting
B) Clustering
C) Disk partitioning
D) Low-level formatting
36. Which technology carries the SCSI protocol over IP?
A) SATA
B) FC
C) iSCSI
D) RPC
E) SMB
37. Which element helps track swap-space usage in modern systems?
A) Disk maps
B) File tables
C) Swap maps
D) Boot tables
E) I/O buffers
38. How does magnetic tape achieve random access?
A) Through sector maps
B) By rewinding/spooling until data is under the read-write head
C) Through parallel data channels
D) Via real-time indexing
E) Using solid-state cache
39. Which term best defines the process of converting logical blocks to physical locations on a disk?
A) Virtual mapping
B) Address translation
C) Index allocation
D) Paging
E) Striping
40. What is one reason that modern systems use less swap space today?
A) Larger physical memory capacity
B) More efficient disk scheduling
C) Faster boot times
D) Enhanced file systems
E) Reduced need for logical formatting
41. What is a common storage size range for magnetic tapes?
A) 1–10 GB
B) 10–50 GB
C) 50–100 GB
D) 200 GB to 1.5 TB
E) 2 TB to 10 TB
42. Which disk scheduling algorithm offers the best uniform wait time across requests?
A) SSTF
B) SCAN
C) C-SCAN
D) FCFS
E) LOOK
43. What is a primary reason file systems group blocks into clusters?
A) Increase boot speed
B) Increase I/O efficiency
C) Prevent fragmentation
D) Improve encryption
E) Simplify user access
44. What do modern drive controllers use to help with disk I/O scheduling?
A) Small internal buffers and queues
B) Read-only memory
C) Sector mappers
D) File allocation tables
45. Which bus technology is NOT commonly used for storage devices?
A) SATA
B) SCSI
C) HDMI
D) USB
E) Fibre Channel