Operating Systems and Your. Week 4: Filesystems

In Linux, what's the difference between a hardlink and a softlink? Check all that apply.

a softlink points to a filename; Softlinks are used to point to filenames, while hardlinks point to inodes. a hardline points to ani node. you can view the hardline count of a file using ls -l.

Although NTFS is largely a self-healing filesystem, which of the following tools can you run to try to locate and repair serious disk corruption of the C: drive?

chkdsk /r c: ; The chkdsk utility, combined with the /r flag, will scan the filesystem on the drive supplied (in this case, C:) and attempt to fix any errors it encounters.

If you want to automatically mount a filesystem on computer startup, what file do you have to modify?

/etc/fstab; To automatically mount filesystems on startup, you have to add a device entry to the /etc/fstab file.

Which of the following is a characteristic of the FAT32 filesystem? Check all that apply.

It doesn't support files larger than 4GB; The FAT32 filesystem is great for cross-platform compatibility, but has lots of limitations that don't make it useful for large data storage. its read and write compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux OSes Its filesystem size can't be larger than 32GB

What's the difference between a GPT and MBR partition table? Check all that apply.

MBR only allows you to have volume sizes of 2TBs or less; MBR has a few legacy traits that are being slowly faded out by GPT. GPT doesn't have a limit to the amount of partitions you can make GPT allows you to have volumes sizes of 2TBs or greater

In Linux, what could a device named /dev/sdb2 refer to?

The second partition of the second hard drive detected on the system; Device partitions are denoted by numbers after the device drive.

Before you can store files on a hard drive, which of the following has to be done? Check all that apply.

Format a filesystem; Before you can start using a hard drive to store files, you'll need to partition the disk, format a filesystem, then mount the filesystem. Partition the disk Mount the filesystem

In Linux, what's the difference between the commands df and du? Check all that apply.

df is used to find the amount of free space on an entire machine; The df, or disk free, command is used to find the amount of free space on an entire machine, while the du, or disk usage, command is used to find the disk usage on a specific directory. du is used to find the amount of disk usage on a specific directory;

True or false: In modern versions of Windows, it's necessary to periodically run a Disk Defragmentation process manually to keep your disk healthy.

false; Nowadays, Windows schedules a task to take care of the defragmentation process in the background automatically for you.

True or false: If you want to save space on a Windows computer, deleting the pagefile.sys file is a good idea.

false; You might free up some space by deleting the pagefile.sys, but this is the location of the swap file in Windows. If you remove it, then your programs will only use RAM memory, which might cause a performance degradation if you run out.

Which of the following commands in Windows will create a symbolic link called "cauliflower" to a file named "broccoli.txt?"

mklink cauliflower broccoli.txt; The mklink command will, by default, create symbolic links in the form of mklink <link name> <file name>.

You want to format a partition with NTFS, and know that the data you'll be storing will consist mostly of many small files. In order to use as little space as possible, should you choose a larger or smaller Allocation Unit Size during the formatting process?

smaller allocation unit size; With a smaller block size, you'll waste less space if your files are small.