Mike Meyers CompTIA A+ Guide to

Managing and Troubleshooting PCs 5th

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File: Chapter 9 Hard Drive Technologies

Multiple Choice

[QUESTION]
1. How many tiny read/write heads service each platter in a traditional hard disk drive (HDD)?
A. Two
B. Three
C. Five
D. Eight
Ans: A
Page: 263
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
2. Which unit measures hard drive spindle speed?
A. Revolutions per minute (RPM)
B. Bytes per second (BPS)
C. Reads per second (RPS)
D. Writes per second (WPS)
Ans: A
Page: 263
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
3. _______________ technology is commonly used in desktop and laptop hard drives, memory
cards, cameras, USB thumb drives, and other handheld devices.
A. Terminal
B. Magnetic
C. Solid-state
D. Copper
Ans: C
Page: 264
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
4. What hard drive technology typically implements a 1.8-, 2.5-, or rarely a 3.5-inch form factor?
A. SSD
B. PATA
C. SCSI
D. SATA
Ans: A
Page: 264
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

5 Which term represents a standardized form factor used in portable devices?
A. pSATA
B. SATAp
C. mSATA
D. pdSATA
Ans: C
Page: 264
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
6. SSDs can install as add-on _______________ cards.
A. ISA
B. PCI
C. AGP
D. PCIe
Ans: D
Page: 264
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
7. Which term specifies a type of nonvolatile flash memory that current SSD devices use to
retain data when power is turned off or disconnected?
A. ATAPI-6
B. ATA-7
C. AHCI
D. NAND
Ans: D
Page: 264-265
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
8. What type of power connector do all PATA drives use?
A. Mini
B. Standard Molex
C. P1
D. Sub
Ans: B
Page: 266
Difficulty: Easy

[QUESTION]
9. What type of cable does a 66 MBps or faster PATA drive require?
A. 40-pin ribbon cable
B. 80-wire cable
C. 4-pin Molex
D. 32-bit twisted pair

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

Ans: B
Page: 266
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
10. How many PATA drives—including hard drives, optical drives, and tape drives—can be
connected to a single ATA controller?
A. One
B. Two
C. Four
D. Six
Ans: B
Page: 266
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
11. Which ATA revision introduced Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology
(S.M.A.R.T.)?
A. ATA-2
B. ATA-3
C. ATA-6
D. ATA-7
Ans: B
Page: 266
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
12. How many wires are in the SATA interface?
A. Four
B. Eight
C. Seven
D. Eighty
Ans: C
Page: 267
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
13. What is the maximum SATA device cable length?
A. 18 inches
B. 1 meter
C. 2 meters
D. 3 meters
Ans: B
Page: 267
Difficulty: Medium

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

[QUESTION]
14. What is the maximum PATA device cable length?
A. 18 inches
B. 1 meters
C. 2 meters
D. 3 meters
Ans: A
Page: 267
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
15. What is the maximum eSATA device cable length?
A. 18 inches
B. 1 meters
C. 2 meters
D. 3 meters
Ans: C
Page: 267
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
16. The most important advance in SATA involves _______________.
A. platter oxidation
B. ohm ratings
C. magnetic interference
D. data throughput
Ans: D
Page: 267
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
17. Which version of SATA ties capable drives directly into the PCI Express bus on
motherboards?
A. SATA 1.0
B. SATA 2.0
C. SATA 3.0
D. SATAe
Ans: D
Page: 268
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
18. At what speed does the SATA 1.0 specification perform?
A. 1.0 GBPS
B. 1.5 GBPS
C. 2.0 GBPS

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

D. 2.5 GBPS
Ans: B
Page: 268
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
19. At what speed does the SATA 2.0 specification perform?
A. 1.5 GBPS
B. 2.0 GBPS
C. 3.0 GBPS
D. 6.0 GBPS
Ans: C
Page: 268
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
20. Which SATA variety runs at 6 GBPS?
A. SATA 2.0
B. SATA 1.0
C. SATA 3.0
D. SATA 6.0
Ans: C
Page: 268
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
21. Which SATA variety runs up to 16 GBPS?
A. SATA 1.0
B. SATA 2.0
C. SATA 3.0
D. SATA 3.2
Ans: D
Page: 268
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
22. Which drive technology rules the roost in the server market?
A. Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.)
B. Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI)
C. Redundant array of independent (or inexpensive) disks (RAID)
D. Small computer system interface (SCSI)
Ans: D
Page: 270
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

23. Which term refers to the mirroring technique in which each drive has its own controller?
A. Disk duplexing
B. Disk striping
C. Disk striping with parity
D. Super-disk mirroring
Ans: A
Page: 270
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
24. _______________ (without parity) means spreading the data among multiple (at least two)
drives.
A. Disk striping
B. Disk mirroring
C. Disk duplexing
D. Parity
Ans: A
Page: 271
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
25. Disk mirroring/duplexing is also known as _______________.
A. RAID 0
B. RAID 1
C. RAID 2
D. RAID 3
Ans: B
Page: 272
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
26. What is the minimum number of drives needed to implement RAID 5?
A. One
B. Two
C. Three
D. Four
Ans: C
Page: 272
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
27. What is the minimum number of drives needed to implement RAID 6?
A. Two
B. Three
C. Four
D. Five

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

Ans: D
Page: 272
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
28. How many failures can RAID 0 withstand and remain functional?
A. Zero
B. One
C. Two
D. Up to three
Ans: A
Page: 273
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
29. How many functional failures can RAID 10 withstand and remain functional?
A. One
B. Up to two
C. Up to four
D. Up to 10
Ans: B
Page: 273
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
30. What tool can you use in Windows to configure and manage hard drives and RAID levels?
A. FDISK
B. Disk Management
C. AHCI
D. Device Manager
Ans: B
Page: 273
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
31. The Disk Management program in Windows Server versions can configure drives for
_______________, and it works with PATA or SATA.
A. RAID 0+1
B. RAID 0 or 10
C. RAID 0, 1, or 5
D. RAID 5 or RAID 10
Ans: C
Page: 273
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

32. Which term is a type of controller that has chips with its own processor and memory?
A. CMOS Northbridge controller
B. BIOS controller
C. Hardware RAID intelligent controllers
D. Software RAID virtual controllers
Ans: C
Page: 274
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
33. You are installing two PATA drives. How should you set the jumpers?
A. Set one to master and the other to slave.
B. Set one to primary and the other to secondary.
C. Set one to first and the other to second.
D. Set one to master and the other stand-alone.
Ans: A
Page: 276
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
34. To install solid-state drives into a desktop or tower with 3.5-inch drive bays,
_______________ are available to make the job easy.
A. magnetic pins
B. channel fillers
C. three-inch nylon screws
D. form-factor adapters
Ans: D
Page: 278
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
35. A common SATA numbering method uses the term _______________ for each controller.
A. pins
B. channels
C. lanes
D. banks
Ans: B
Page: 279
Difficulty: Medium

Fill in the Blank

[QUESTION]
1. A traditional hard disk drive (HDD) is composed of individual disks, or aluminum platters that
are coated with a(n) _______________ medium.
Ans: magnetic

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

Page: 263
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
2. Many folks refer to traditional HDDs as magnetic hard drives, or sometimes
_______________-based hard drives.
Ans: platter
Page: 263
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
3. Hard drives run at a set _______________, with the spinning platters measured in revolutions
per minute (RPM).
Ans: spindle speed
Page: 263
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
4. Faster drives mean better system performance, but they can also cause the computer
to_______________.
Ans: overheat
Page: 263
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
5. Drive bay _______________ sit at the front of a bay and blow air across the drive.
Ans: fans
Page: 263
Difficulty: Easy

[QUESTION]
6. In technical terms, _______________ technology and devices are based on the combination of
semiconductors and transistors used to create electrical components with no moving parts.
Ans: solid-state
solid state
Page: 264
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
7. Windows supports _______________, drives that combine flash memory and spinning platters
to provide fast and reliable storage.
Ans: hybrid hard drives (HHDs)
hybrid hard drives
HHDs
Page: 265
Difficulty: Hard

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

[QUESTION]
8. ATA hard drives are often referred to as _______________ drives.
Ans: integrated drive electronics (IDE)
integrated drive electronics
IDE
Page: 266
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
9. PATA drives dominated the industry for more than a decade, but have been replaced by
_______________ drives that send data in serial, using only one wire for data transfers.
Ans: serial ATA (SATA)
serial ATA
SATA
Page: 266
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
10. SATA creates a point-to-point connection between the SATA device and the SATA
controller, the _______________.
Ans: host bus adapter (HBA)
host bus adapter
HBA
Page: 267
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
11. The maximum SATA-device cable length is _______________ inches.
Ans: 40
Page: 267
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
12. The latest version of SATA, SATA Express (SATAe) or SATA 3.2, ties capable drives
directly into the _______________ bus on motherboards.
Ans: PCI Express
Page: 268
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
13. _______________is a disk-optimization feature for SATA drives that enables faster read and
write speeds.
Ans: Native command queuing (NCQ)
Native command queuing
NCQ

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

Page: 268
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
14. Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) mode is enabled at the _______________ level
and generally needs to be enabled before you install the operating system.
Ans: CMOS
Page: 268
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
15. The _______________ specification supports a communication connection between the
operating system and the SSD directly through a PCIe bus lane, reducing latency and taking full
advantage of the wicked-fast speeds of high-end SSDs.
Ans: Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe)
Non-Volatile Memory Express
Non Volatile Memory Express (NVMe)
Non-Volatile Memory Express
Nonvolatile Memory Express (NVMe)
Nonvolatile Memory Express
NVMe
Page: 269
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
16. _______________ extends the SATA bus to external devices.
Ans: External SATA (eSATA)
External SATA
eSATA
Page: 269
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
17. Regardless of the external interface, you will find an ordinary SATA drive inside the
_______________ (the name used to describe the casing of external hard drives).
Ans: external enclosure
Page: 269
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
18. The process of reading and writing data at the same time to two drives is called
_______________.
Ans: disk mirroring
Page: 270
Difficulty: Medium

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

[QUESTION]
19. Disk _______________, spreading data across multiple drives, by itself provides no
redundancy.
Ans: striping
Page: 271
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
20. Disk striping with parity protects data by adding extra information, called _______________
data, that can be used to rebuild data if one of the drives fails.
Ans: parity
Page: 272
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
21. RAID that distributes data and parity information evenly across all the drives is known as
_______________.
Ans: RAID 5
Page: 272
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
22. _______________ is also called RAID 1+0 and sometimes called a “stripe of mirrors.”
Ans: RAID 10
Page: 272
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
23. Software RAID means the _______________ is in charge of all the RAID functions.
Ans: operating system (OS)
operating system
OS
Page: 274
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
24. _______________ is the ability to replace a bad drive without disturbing the operating
system.
Ans: Hot-swapping
Hot swapping
Page: 274
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
25. As per the PATA standard, if there is only one hard drive, the drive’s jumper is set to master
or _______________.

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

Ans: standalone
Page: 276
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
26. With a PATA hard drive that uses a jumper setting called cable select, the position at the end
of the cable is the _______________ and the one in the middle is the slave.
Ans: master
Page: 276-277
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
27. Hard drive cables have a colored stripe that corresponds to the number-one pin—called
_______________—on the connector.
Ans: pin 1
Page: 277
Difficulty: Easy

[QUESTION]
28. The _______________ on SATA controller and power cables makes it impossible to install
either incorrectly.
Ans: keying
Page: 278
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
29. Motherboards provide support for the SATA hard drive controllers via the system BIOS, but
they require configuration in _______________ for the specific hard drives attached.
Ans: CMOS
Page: 278
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
30. If the controllers are enabled and the drive is properly connected, the drive should appear in
CMOS through a process called_______________.
Ans: autodetection
Page: 278
Difficulty: Medium

Short Answer

[QUESTION]
1. Briefly describe the spindle or rotational speed of a hard drive.
Ans: Hard drives run at a set spindle speed, with the spinning platters measured in revolutions
per minute (RPM). Older drives ran at a speed of 3600 RPM, but new drives are hitting 15,000
RPM. The faster the spindle speed, the faster the controller can store and retrieve data. Here are

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

the common speeds: 5400, 7200, 10,000, and 15,000 RPM.
Page: 263
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
2. Why is airflow an important consideration in system builds?
Ans: Airflow in a case can make or break your system stability, especially when you add new
drives that increase the ambient temperature. Hot systems get flaky and lock up at odd moments.
Page: 264
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
3. What items can impede airflow?
Ans: Many things can impede the airflow—jumbled-up ribbon cables (used by older storage
systems, USB headers, and other attachments), drives squished together in a tiny case, fans
clogged by dust or animal hair, and so on.
Page: 264
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
4. Briefly describe the various SSD memory technologies.
Ans: Less expensive SSDs typically implement less reliable multi-level cell (MLC) memory
technology in place of the more efficient single-level cell (SLC) technology to cut costs. The
cutting-edge memory in SSDs is stacked memory, which takes NAND and adds a third
dimension to it, giving it increased density and capacity.
Page: 265
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
5. Briefly describe the purpose of the Windows trim function.
Ans: The Windows trim function—built into Windows 7 and later versions—is a periodic
garbage collection system that seeks out SSD memory cells with deleted contents and erases
them, making them available to speed up new write operations.
Page: 265
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
6. Which PATA standard provides support for very large hard drives and what are the maximum
capacities of supported storage size and data transfer speed?
Ans: The last PATA standard, called ATA/ATAPI-7, provides support for very large hard drives
(144 petabytes [PB], a number greater than 144 million GB) at speeds up to 133 megabytes per
second (MBps).
Page: 266
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

7. What is S.M.A.R.T.?
Ans: ATA-3 introduced Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.), an
internal drive program that tracks errors and error conditions within the drive. This information
is stored in nonvolatile memory on the drive and can be examined externally with S.M.A.R.T.
reader software.
Page: 266
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
8. Describe four problems associated with the parallel ATA interface.
Ans: For all its longevity as the mass storage interface of choice for the PC, parallel
ATA had these problems.
1. The flat ribbon cables impeded airflow and could be a pain to insert properly.
2. The cables had a limited length, only 18 inches.
3. You could not hot-swap PATA drives. You had to shut down completely before installing
or replacing a drive.
4. The technology had simply reached the limits of what it could do in terms of throughput.
Page: 267
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
9. Rather than using a master/slave concept, how does SATA function?
Ans: SATA did away with the entire master/slave concept. Each drive connects to one port.
Further, there’s no maximum number of drives—many motherboards today support up to eight
SATA drives. If you want more than eight, you can snap in a SATA HBA and load the SATA
drives.
Page: 267
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
10. What are the two elements of hot swapping?
Ans: Hot-swapping entails two elements, the first being the capacity to plug a device into the
computer without harming either. The second is that once the device is safely attached, it will be
automatically recognized and become a fully functional component of the system.
Page: 267
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
11. What are the specifications and matching speeds of three common SATA-specific varieties?
Ans: SATA drives come in three common SATA-specific varieties: 1.5 Gbps, 3 Gbps, and 6
Gbps, which have a maximum throughput of 150 MBps, 300 MBps, and 600 MBps,
respectively.
Page: 267
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

12. What is the purpose of the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI)?
Ans: Current versions of Windows support the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI), an
efficient way to work with SATA HBAs.
Page: 268
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
13. What advanced SATA features does Advanced Host Controller Interface
(AHCI) usage unlock?
Ans: Using AHCI unlocks some of the advanced features of SATA, such as hot-swapping and
native command queuing.
Page: 268
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
14. How can you take advantage of eSATA in a desktop or laptop if an external connector does
not exist?
Ans: If a desktop system does not have an eSATA external connector, or if you need more
external SATA devices, you can install an eSATA HBA PCIe card or eSATA internal-to-
external slot plate. You can similarly upgrade laptop systems to support external SATA devices
by inserting an eSATA ExpressCard. There are also USB-to-eSATA adapter plugs.
Page: 269
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
15. What is disk mirroring?
Ans: The process of reading and writing data at the same time to two drives is called disk
mirroring.
Page: 270
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
16. What is disk duplexing?
Ans: Disk duplexing is a super-drive mirroring technique uses a separate controller for each
drive.
Page: 270
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
17. Describe the advantages of using disk duplexing over disk mirroring.
Ans: With two drives, each on a separate controller, the system will continue to operate even if
the primary drive’s controller stops working. Disk duplexing is also faster than disk mirroring
because one controller does not write each piece of data twice.
Page: 270
Difficulty: Medium

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

[QUESTION]
18. What is disk striping without parity?
Ans: Disk striping without parity involves spreading the data among multiple (at least two)
drives.
Page: 271
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
19. Describe how RAID 5 works.
Ans: Instead of dedicated data and parity drives, RAID 5 distributes data and parity information
evenly across all drives. This is the fastest way to provide data redundancy. RAID 5 is by far the
most common RAID implementation and requires at least three drives. RAID 5 arrays effectively
use one drive’s worth of space for parity.
Page: 272
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
20. What is meant by just a bunch of disks (or drives), or JBOD?
Ans: JBOD is a storage system composed of multiple independent disks of various sizes. Many
popular drive controllers support JBOD.
Page: 272
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
21. Describe how RAID 0+1 works.
Ans: RAID 0+1 is known as Nested, Mirrored Stripes. Like RAID 10, RAID 0+1 (or a “mirror
of stripes) is a nested set of arrays that works in opposite configuration from RAID 10. It takes a
minimum of four drives to implement RAID 0+1. Start with two, RAID 0 striped arrays, and
then mirror the two arrays to each other.
Page: 273
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
22. Where is the obvious place to start when implementing RAID?
Ans: The obvious starting place for RAID is to connect at least two hard drives in some fashion
to create a RAID array. Specialized RAID controller cards support RAID arrays of up to 15
drives—plenty to support even the most complex RAID needs.
Page: 273
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
23. What are the factors that make either software or hardware RAID the best choice?
Ans: Software RAID is often used when price takes priority over performance. Hardware RAID
is used when you need speed along with data redundancy.
Page: 273
Difficulty: Medium

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

[QUESTION]
24. When installing PATA drives, how do you set the jumpers?
Ans: If you have only one hard drive, set the drive’s jumpers to master or standalone. If you have
two drives, set one to master and the other to slave. Or set both to cable select.
Page: 276
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
25. What is the function of the cable select jumper setting?
Ans: Many PATA hard drives use a jumper setting called cable select rather than master or
slave. As the name implies, the position on the cable determines which drive will be master or
slave: master on the end, slave in the middle. For cable select to work properly with two drives,
you must set both drives as cable select.
Page: 276-277
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
26. What options are generally available if you do not see a label on the drive that tells you how
to set the jumpers?
Ans: If you do not see a label on the drive that tells you how to set the jumpers, you have several
options. First, look at the drive maker’s Web site. Every drive manufacturer lists its drive jumper
settings on the Web, although finding the information you want can take a while. Second, try
phoning the hard drive maker directly. Unlike many other PC parts manufacturers, hard drive
producers tend to stay in business for a long time and offer great technical support.
Page: 277
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
27. Why is it easier to install a SATA drive instead of a PATA device?
Ans: Installing SATA hard disk drives is much easier than installing PATA devices because
there’s no master, slave, or cable select configuration to mess with. In fact, there are no jumper
settings to worry about at all, as SATA supports only a single device per controller channel.
Page: 277
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
28. How do you install solid state drives, including installation into a desktop or tower?
Ans: You install a solid-state drive as you would any PATA or SATA drive. They usually come
in 2.5-inch laptop sizes. To install them into a desktop or tower with 3.5-inch drive bays, form-
factor adapters are available to make the job easy.
Page: 278
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
29. How do you install M.2 and mSATA drives?

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

Ans: M.2 and mSATA drives slip into their slot on the motherboard or add-on card, then either
clip in place or secure with a tiny screw. Both standards are keyed, so you can’t install them
incorrectly.
Page: 278
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
30. What two questions should be considered before installing or replacing an existing HDD
with an SSD?
Ans: Keep in mind the following considerations before installing or replacing an existing HDD
with an SSD:
• Do you have the appropriate drivers and firmware for the SSD?
• Do you have everything important backed up?
Page: 278
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
31. What is a first step in configuring controllers?
Ans: As a first step in configuring controllers, make certain they’re enabled. Most controllers
remain active, ready to automatically detect new drives, but you can disable them. Scan through
your CMOS settings to locate the controller on/off options. This is also the time to check
whether your onboard RAID controllers work in both RAID and non-RAID settings.
Page: 278
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
32. What is autodetection?
Ans: If the controllers are enabled and the drive is properly connected, the drive should appear in
CMOS through a process called autodetection. Autodetection is a powerful and handy feature
that takes almost all of the work out of configuring hard drives.
Page: 278-279
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
33. How did SATA change autodetection?
Ans: SATA changed autodetection a little. Motherboards with SATA connectors use a
numbering system—and every motherboard uses its own numbering system! One common
numbering method uses the term channels for each controller. The first boot device is channel 1,
the second is channel 2, and so on. So instead of names of drives, you see numbers.
Page: 279
Difficulty: Medium

[QUESTION]
34. How do you implement AHCI? List the available options.
Ans: On motherboards that support AHCI, you implement it in CMOS. You will generally have
up to three options: IDE/SATA or compatibility mode, AHCI, or RAID. Use compatibility mode

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

to install old operating systems, such as Windows XP. Going to AHCI or RAID enables the
AHCI option for the HBA.
Page: 280
Difficulty: Hard

[QUESTION]
35. What is the best friend a tech has when it comes to troubleshooting hard drive
installation?
Ans: The best friend a tech has when it comes to troubleshooting hard drive
installation is the autodetection feature of the CMOS setup utility.
Page: 281
Difficulty: Medium

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.