A+ chapter 10 902

cluster

A _____ is a Basic unit of storage on a floppy or hard disk. Multiple sectors are contained in a cluster. When Windows stores a file on a disk, it writes those files into dozens or even hundreds of contiguous clusters. If there aren't enough contiguous open clusters avail able, the operating system finds the next open cluster and writes there, continuing this process until the entire file is saved. The FAT or MFT tracks how the files are distributed among the clusters on the disk.

Dynamic disk

A _____ is a drive that uses the dynamic storage partitioning scheme.

Swap partition

A _____ is another special type of partition, but _____s are found only on Linux and UNIX systems. A swap partition's only job is to act like RAM when your system needs more RAM than you have installed. windows has a similar function with a _____ that uses a special file instead of a partition.

Hidden partition

A _____ is really just a primary partition that is hidden from your OS. Only special BIOS tools may access a _____. They are used by some PC makers to hide a backup copy of the OS that you can use to restore your sys.

Simple volumes

A simple volume acts just like a primary partition. If you have only 1 dynamic disk in a sys, it can have only a simple volume. Important to note here that a simple volume may act like a traditional primary partition, but it is different because you cannot install an OS on it. in disk management, right click on any unallocated space on the dynamic disk and choose new simple volume.

volume

A structure created with a dynamic disk.

Partition boot sector

After the MBR locates the appropriate partition, the _____ loads the OS on that partition. The _____ stores information important to this partition, such as the location of the OS boot files.

Logical drives

An extended partition can contain multiple _____, each of which can get a drive letter. This overcomes the four partition limit on an MBR disk. _____ work like primary partitions, it gets a drive letter like D: or E:, but you can't boot an OS from it.

exam tip.

CompTIA refers to a hidden partition that contains a restorable factory recovery partition. copy of an installed OS as a factory recovery partition.

Defrag

Defrag takes care of the fragmentation of clusters, those increase your drive access times dramatically. once a month.

Disk management cannot do nested RAID

Disk Management cannot do any nested RAID arrays. So if you want RAID 0+1 or RAID 1+0 (RAID 10), you need to use third-party software (or go with hardware RAID).

Disk cleanup

Disk cleanup, its a tool. Includes files in the recycle bin, temporary internet files, downloaded program files., and temporary files. start>all programs>accessories>system tools> disk cleanup.

Dynamic disk note.

Dynamic disk note. A dynamic disk volume is still technically a partition, but it does things a regular partition can't. 1st, A dynamic disk can have as many volumes as you want. It is not limited to 4. 2nd, You can create, in software, new drive structures yo can't do with MBR drives. You can implement RAID, span volumes over multiple drives, and extend volumes on one or more drives. (Table 10-1 p.348)

Fragmentation

Even when FAT works perfectly, parts of any file can get written to separate places on the disk in a process called _____.

disk initialization

Every hard drive in a windows system has special information placed onto the drive through a process called ______. (Comptia refers to this process as initializing a disk.) This initialization information includes identifiers that say "this drive belongs in this system" and other info that defines what this hdd does in the sys.

active partition

Every primary partition on a single drive has a special setting stored in the partition table called active that determines the _____.

Exam tip.

Exam tip. FAT32 only supports drives up to 2 TB and files up to 4 GB.

Exam tip.

Exam tip. Know the difference between FAT32, FAT64/exFAT, and NTFS for the exam.

Exam tip.

Exam tip. extended partitions do not receive drive letters, but the logical drives within an extended partition do.

Extending a partition

Extending a partition. example here has a 1-TB drive with a 499-GB partition and 500 GB of unallocated space. If you've gone through this process and have changed your mind, now wanting to make the partition use the full terabyte, what do you have to do? You can simply click the Extend button and then apply the rest of the unallocated space to the currently formatted partition. The Extend function enables you to tack unpartitioned space onto an already partitioned drive with a click of the mouse.

Extending and spanning volume note

Extending and spanning volume note. The capability to extend and span volumes makes dynamic disks worth their weight in gold. If you start running out of space on a volume, you can simply add another physical hard drive to the system and span the volume to the new drive. This keeps your drive letters consistent and unchanging so your programs don't get confused, yet enables you to expand drive space when needed.

FAT16 cluster sizes

FAT 16 Cluster sizes FDISK makea partition this big sect/clust 116 - 127.9MB 4 128 - 255.9MB 8 256 - 511.9MB 16 512 - 1023.9MB 32 1024- 2048MB 64

FAT32 Cluster sizes

FAT 32 CLUSTER SIZES Drive Size Cluster Size 512 MB or 1023 MB - 4 KB 1024 MB to 2 GB -4 KB 2 GB to 8 GB- -4 KB 8 GB to 16 GB -8 KB 16 GB to 32 GB -16 KB >32 GB -32 KB

FAT16 notes

FAT16 notes. Was used on floppy, some USB, but floppy was only 12 bits. THe column on the right of the FAT contains info on the status of sectors. All drives contain faulty sectors. HAD A 32MB LIMIT since the 16-bit FAT addresses a max of 64 K (2^16) locations, which is 64K x 512 bytes per sector, 32MB.

striped

If you have two or more dynamic disks in a PC, Disk management enables you to combine them into a _____ volume. Disk management doesn't use the term, but this is a RAID 0 ARRAY. a striped volume spreads out blocks of each file across multiple disks.

FAT32

Improved upon FAT16 in two major ways. It supports partitions up to 2TB. Second, it uses 32 bits to describe each cluster, which means clusters can drop to more reasonable sizes. A 2 GB partition using FAT16 would use 32KB clusters, while FAT32 would use 4KB clusters instead, far more efficient disk space with FAT32

MBR partition table note

MBR partition table note. MBR partition tables support two types of partitions: primary partitions and extended partitions.

File allocation table (FAT)

MS-DOS version 2.1 first supported hard drives using a special data structure and indexing system to keep track of stored data on the hard drive, and Microsoft called this structure the _____. Think of the _____ as nothing more than a card catalog that keeps track of which sectors store the various parts of a file.

Hierarchical file system plus (HFS+)

Mac OS X uses the _____ by default, although you can read and write to several different file systems with the OS. Latest versions can read and write to FAT32 and exFAT, though only read NTFS. Not on exam ?

Maintaining HDDs

Maintaining HDDs. use the CHKDSK utility to check for bad clusters on you HDD in windows. To access error checking on a windows system, open win explorer/file explorer, right click on the drive you want to check and choose properties to open the drive's properties box. Select the tools tab and click the check now button. error checking can be run once a week, reasonable amount.

encrypting file system (EFS)

Microsoft calls the encryption utility in NTFS the _____, but it's simply an aspect of NTFS, not a standalone file system.

Microsoft file systems

Microsoft file systems. FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, exFAT.

fourth extended file system (ext4)

Most linux distros use a file system known as _____ by default. Some older distros use one of its predecessors, such as ext2 or ext3. This file system supports volumes up to 1 exabyte EB with file sizes up to 16TB and is backwards compatible with ext2 and ext3. Linux can read and write to NTFS, exFAT, HFS+ and ext2/3/4.

NTFS Cluster Sizes

NTFS Cluster sizes. Drive Size / Cluster Size / #of Sectors 512 MB or less 512 bytes 1 513 MB to 1024 MB (1 GB) 1024 bytes (1 KB) 2 1025 MB to 2048 MB (2 GB) 2048 bytes (2 KB) 4 2049 MB and larger 4096 bytes (4 KB) 8

NTFS partitioning note.

NTFS partitioning note. Supports partitions up to ~16 TB on a dynamic disk ( tho only 2 TB on basic disk. ) by tweaking cluster sizes, you could get partitions up to 16 exabytes, would cover us for the next 100 years.

Disk quotas

NTFS supports _____, enabling admins to set limits on drive space usage for users. to set _____ you must log on as admin, right click the hdd name, select properties. Select quota tab. Good for multi user systems to keep down storage monopoly.

Exam tip.

NTFS supports partitions up to 16TB by default.

master file allocation table (MFT)

NTFS utilizes an enhanced file allocation table called the _____. An NTFS partition keeps a backup copy of the most critical parts of the MFT in the middle of the disk, reducing the chance that a serious drive error can wipe out both the MFT and the MFT copy.

Access control list (ACL)

NTFS views individual files and folders as objects and provides security for those objects through a feature called _____.

Resiliency mechanism

Once you create the pool, you need to select what microsoft calls the _____, which essentially means providing one or more layers of redundancy so you can lose a hard drive or two and not lose any data.

Exam tip.

Only the lower-end editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 don't support dynamic disks. Almost every version and edition you'll run into these days supports dynamic disks.

Partitioning methods

Partitioning methods. Windows supports 3. Older master boot record (MBR), Windows' proprietary dynamic storage partitioning scheme, and the GUID partition table (GPT).

Primary Partitions and Multiple OS

Primary partitions and multiple OS. Primary partitions are usually assigned drive letters and appear in windows explorer/File explorer (once you format them). the first lettered primary partition in windows is always (C:). After that, you can label the partitions D: through Z:.

Spanning volumes

Spanning volumes. You can extend the size of a simple volume to any unallocated space on a dynamic disk. You can also extend the volume to grab extra space on completely different dynamic disks, creating a spanned volume. To extend or span, simply right-click the volume you want to make bigger, and choose Extend Volume from the options

Partition table

The MBR also contains the _____, which describes the number and size of partitions on the disk. MBR _____ supports up to four partitions ----- the _____ is large enough to store entries for only four partitions. The instructions on the master boot record use this table to determine which partition contains the active OS

High level formatting

The OS must locate bad sectors, mark them unusable, and then prevent any files form being written to them. This mapping of bad sectors is one of the functions of _____.

Thin provisioning

The _____ feature means you can create a space with more capacity than your current physical drives provide.

end of file marker

The _____ is FFFF in hex and marks the end of a cluster that is filled.

Master boot record (MBR)

The first sector of an _____ drive contains the _____. To clarify, HDDs that use the _____ partitioning scheme have a tiny bit of data that is also called the _____. when your pc first boots, BIOS looks at the first sector of your hard drive for instructions. At this point, it doesn't matter which OS you use or how many partitions you have. Without this bit of code, your OS will never load.

FDISK

The old command line program to partition disks for early windows versions.

New Technology File System (NTFS)

The windows format of choice these days is the _____. It came out a long time ago with the first version of windows NT. Modern windows version is NTFS 3.1, although it is often referred to as NTFS 5.0/5.1. It uses clusters and file allocation tables but in a more complex and powerful way. 6 improvements: redundancy, security, compression, encryption, disk quotas, and cluster sizing.

Formatting

This is the last step after partitioning before your OS can use the drive. _____ does two things: it creates a file system -- like a library's card catalog -- and makes the root directory in that file system. You need to format every partition and volume you create so it can hold data that you can easily retrieve.

mount point

While partitions and volumes can be assigned a drive letter, D: thru Z:. they can also be mounted as a folder on another drive, also known as a ______. This enables you to use your existing folders to store more data than can fit on a single drive or partition/volume.

Disk Management

Windows uses a graphical partitioning program called _____, you'll find it under computer management in administrative tools.

Dynamic storage partitioning

With windows 2000, microsoft defined a type of partitioning called _____, better known as dynamic disks. Microsoft calls a drive structure created with a dynamic disk a volume.

storage pool

With windows 8 and later, you can group one or more physical drives of any size into a single _____. These drives can be internal HDD or SSD or external storage connected via USB.

parity spaces

_____ add another layer of resiliency to the array, similarly to how a RAID 5 or RAID 6 provides redundancy. The added resiliency comes with both an upside and a downside. Good thing about parity spaces is that they are more space efficient than 2 way mirroring.

striped volumes

_____ are RAID 0 volumes. You may take any two unallocated spaces on two separate hard drives and stripe them. But again, if either drive fails, you lose all of your data.

mirrored volumes

_____ are RAID 1 volumes. You may take any two unallocated spaces on two separate hard drives and mirror them. If one of the two mirrored drives fails, the other keeps running.

Primary Partitions

_____ are designed to support bootable operating systems. Only primary partitions can boot operating systems.

Extended partitions

_____ are not bootable. A single MBR disk may have up to four primary partitions or up to three primary partitions and one extended partition.

exFAT / FAT64

_____ breaks the 4GB file size barrier of FAT32, supporting files up to 16 EXABYTES and a theoretical partition limit of 64 ZETABYTES. Microsoft recommends a partition size of up to 512 TB on today's larger USB flash drives. _____ extends FAT32 from 32-bit cluster entries to 64-bit cluster entries in the file table. _____ still lacks NTFS extra features like compression, permissions, and encryption.

FFF7

_____ is the bad cluster / bad sector marker.

clustering

_____ refers to combining sets of contiguous sectors and treating them as a single unit in the FAT. These units are called FILE ALLOCATION UNITs or CLUSTERS.

Spanned volumes

_____ use unallocated space on multiple drives to create a single volume. _____ are a bit risky: if any of the spanned drives fails, the entire volume is lost.

Simple Volumes

_____ work a lot like primary partitions. If you have a hard drive and you want to make half of it E: and the other half F:, you create two volumes on a dynamic disk, that's it.

RAID 5 volumes

_____, as the name implies, are for RAID 5 arrays. A RAID 5 volume requires three or more dynamic disks with equal-sized unallocated spaces.

Storage Spaces

______ functions like a RAID management tool, except it goes well beyond the typical tool.

Mirror spaces

______ keep more than one copy of data, like in a RAID mirror array. So you can lose one or more drives and still save your data. The number of drives in the array determines which mirror options you have. A two-way mirror requires at least two drives; a three way mirror requires 5 or more. Mirror spaces work like RAID 1 or RAID 10, providing excellent redundancy and robust performance.

Simple spaces

_______ are just pooled storage, like JBOD, that has multiple drives of whatever capacity added together to forma single virtual drive. Simple spaces provide no resiliency, so if a drive fails, the data goes away. These are good for temp storage.

disk management notes.

disk management notes. foreign drive: you get this when you move a dynamic disk from one comp to another. failed: this means that the disk is damaged or corrupt and you've probably lost data. online: working and healthy offline: disk corrupt or having comms problems.

Disk management raid 5

disk management raid 5. Disk Management enables you to create a RAID 5 array that uses three or more disks to create a robust solution for storage.

exam tip.

exam tip. A storage pool is a collection of physical drives that enables you to flexibly add and expand capacity. Storage spaces are virtual drives that are created from storage pool free space. Storage spaces have resiliency and fixed provisioning.

exam tip.

exam tip. CompTIA may ask you how to recover a deleted file. If the file is still in the Recycle Bin, simply browse to the Recycle Bin, right-click on the deleted file, and select Restore. If the file was deleted and bypassed the Recycle Bin or for any other reason is no longer there, Microsoft offers no utility that can recover or restore the file. You must resort to one of the third-party utilities that are available.

exam tip.

exam tip. Know the differences between a quick format vs. a full format for the exam. full format: files are removed from the volume that you are formatting and the hard disk is scanned for bad sectors. The scan for bad sectors is responsible for the majority of the time that it takes to format a volume. quick format: format removes files from the partition, but does not scan the disk for bad sectors. Only use this option if your hard disk has been previously formatted and you are sure that your hard disk is not damaged.

exam tip

exam tip. Only one master boot record and one partition table within that master boot record exist per MBR disk. Each partition has a partition boot sector.

exam tip.

exam tip. The CompTIA A+ 902 exam objectives mention "splitting" partitions. To be clear, you never actually split a partition. If you want to turn one partition into two, you need to remove the existing partition and create two new ones, or shrink the existing partition and add a new one to the unallocated space. If you see the term on the exam, know that this is what CompTIA means.

Exam tip.

exam tip. When you move a dynamic disk from one computer to another, it shows up in Disk Management as a foreign drive. You can import a foreign drive into the new system by right-clicking the disk icon and selecting Import Foreign Disks.

high level formatting notes.

high level formatting notes. After the format program creates the FAT, it marches thru every sector of the partition, writing and attempting to read from each sector sequentially. Bad sectors are marked with status code FFF7 in the sector's FAT location. Good sectors get 0000 code.

Basic disk

microsoft calls a hard drive that uses either the MBR partitioning scheme or the GPT partitioning scheme a _____ and calls a drive that uses the dynamic storage partitioning scheme a dynamic disk.

note.

note. The terms "volume" and "partition" refer to the same thing: a defined chunk of your hard drive.

note.

note. Windows 8 and later can use a software RAID system called Storage Spaces that's distinct from dynamic disks.

Storage spaces note

storage spaces note. to run the tool, get to the start screen and type storage spaces. It will show up in the search charm. The opening screen gives you pretty much a single option, to create a new pool and storage space

globally unique identifier partition table (GPT)

the _____ partitioning scheme shares a lot with the MBR scheme, but most of the MBR scheme's limitations have been fixed. here are improvements. 1. MBR drives are limited to 4 partitions, a GPT drive can have nearly unlimited number of primary partitions. Microsoft has limited windows to 128 partitions. 2. MBR partitions can be no larger than 2.2TB, but GPT partitions have no restrictions. There is a max size limit, but its so large its in zettabytes, a million terabytes.

root directory

the _____ provides the foundation upon which the OS builds files and folders.

data structure

the official jargon term for FAT is _____, but it is more like a two-column spreadsheet. The left column gives each sector a hex number from 0000 to FFFF. Each hex char represents 4 binary numbers or 4 bits. Four hex chars represent 16 bits. If you do the math (216), you'll find that there are 65,536 (64 K) sectors that can be tracked, or indexed. We call this type of FAT FAT16.

Stripe set

using two or more drives in a group is called a _____, striping data writes data first to a certain number of clusters on one drive, then to a certain number of clusters on the next drive. If any drive fails, the whole set of files is lost.

Volume vs partition

volume vs partition. The main difference between a storage volume and partition is the type of disk used. A volume is created on a dynamic disk -- a logical structure that can span multiple physical disks -- while a partition is created on a basic disk.

mirror set

win7 and later professional, enterprise, and ultimate editions can create a _____ with two drives for data redundancy. THIS IS KNOWN AS RAID 1. To create a mirror, right click on unallocated space on a drive and select new mirrored volume.