Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+ Guide to 801: Managing and Troubleshooting PCs, Fourth Edition
(Exam 220-801)
Answer Key
Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Hard Drive Technologies
Key Term Quiz Answers
Use the Key Terms list to complete the sentences that follow. Not all terms will be used.
1. An ATA hard drive connects to the controller with a(n) 40-pin ribbon cable, while an Ultra
DMA mode 4 drive uses a(n) 80-wire cable.
2. A(n) cylinder is composed of a group of tracks of the same diameter that the read/write heads
can access without moving.
3. To install a parallel ATA device to a serial ATA controller, use a tiny card called a(n) SATA
bridge.
4. LBA, developed by Western Digital, uses sector translation to get around the limits of 1024
cylinders, 16 heads, and 63 sectors/track.
5. Seen in RAID 5, disk striping with parity uses at least three drives and combines the best
features of disk mirroring and disk striping.
6. A CD-ROM drive that is Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface (ATAPI)compliant installs and cables just like an EIDE drive.
7. The ANSI ATA committee adopted the ATA/ATAPI-6 standard, called “Big Drive” by
Maxtor, that allows drives with more than 144 petabytes.
8. Drives known as ATA/133 (Ultra DMA 6) transfer data at 133 MBps.
9. Drives that use DMA modes bypass the CPU and send data directly to memory.
10. Devices known as small computer system interface (SCSI) devices require termination at
both ends of a chain.
Multiple-Choice Quiz Answers
1. Which of the following is not used to compute storage capacity in CHS disk geometry?
A. Sectors per track
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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+ Guide to 801: Managing and Troubleshooting PCs, Fourth Edition
(Exam 220-801)
Answer Key
Chapter 10
B. Tracks
C. Heads
D. Cylinders
Answer: B
2. Which level of RAID is disk striping with distributed parity?
A. RAID 0
B. RAID 1
C. RAID 5
D. RAID 6
Answer: C
3. Counting both channels, what is the maximum number of drives/devices that EIDE can
support?
A. One
B. Two
C. Seven
D. Four
Answer: D
4. Which of the following is not true about cable select?
A. Both drives/devices should be set for cable select.
B. Cable select requires a special cable with a pinhole through one wire.
C. The colored stripe on the ribbon cable should align with pin 1 on the controller and drive.
D. Position of the drives on the cable does not matter.
Answer: D
5. If you install two IDE drives on the same cable, how will the computer differentiate them?
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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+ Guide to 801: Managing and Troubleshooting PCs, Fourth Edition
(Exam 220-801)
Answer Key
Chapter 10
A. The CMOS setup allows you to configure them.
B. You must set jumpers to determine which drive functions as master and which functions
as slave.
C. You will set jumpers so each drive has a unique ID number.
D. The drives will be differentiated by whether you place them before or after the twist in
the ribbon cable.
Answer: B
6. What was the maximum hard drive size allowed by BIOS routines for the original AT
command set?
A. 528 MB
B. 1024 MB
C. 504 MB
D. 1028 MB
Answer: C
7. Which of the following terms does not describe parallel ATA devices?
A. IDE
B. EIDE
C. SCSI
D. ATA
Answer: C
8. Shelby wants to add a 500-GB hard drive to her computer. Which of the following will allow
her to do so?
A. CHS
B. LBA
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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+ Guide to 801: Managing and Troubleshooting PCs, Fourth Edition
(Exam 220-801)
Answer Key
Chapter 10
C. ECHS
D. INT13
Answer: D
9. Which of the following techniques provides redundancy by using two disks and two
controllers?
A. Drive mirroring
B. Drive duplexing
C. Disk striping
D. Disk striping with parity
Answer: B
10. How many wires does an Ultra DMA ATA cable have?
A. 24
B. 34
C. 40
D. 80
Answer: D
11. Billy just installed a second hard drive, but the autodetection utility in CMOS does not detect
it. Sara told him he probably has the jumpers set incorrectly or forgot to connect the Molex
power connector. John told him his new hard drive is probably bad and he should return it.
Who is probably correct, Sara or John?
A. Sara is correct.
B. John is correct.
C. Neither is correct.
D. Either John or Sara may be correct.
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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+ Guide to 801: Managing and Troubleshooting PCs, Fourth Edition
(Exam 220-801)
Answer Key
Chapter 10
Answer: D
12. Which of the following is not an advantage of serial ATA (SATA)?
A. It is hot-swappable.
B. Thinner cables provide better airflow inside the case.
C. SATA provides faster data throughput than PATA.
D. SATA cables must be shorter than PATA cables.
Answer: D
13. What standard did the ANSI ATA committee adopt that increased disk storage capacity to
more than 144 petabytes?
A. ATA/ATAPI-6
B. LBA
C. INT13
D. ECHS
Answer: A
14. Which of the following can SSDs use to retain data integrity when a system loses power or is
turned off?
A. DRAM
B. RAM drive
C. NAND
D. SDRAM
Answer: C
15. Which of the following represent common solid-state drive form factors?
A. AT, ATX, and BTX
B. 8-inch, 2.5-inch, and 5.25-inch
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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+ Guide to 801: Managing and Troubleshooting PCs, Fourth Edition
(Exam 220-801)
Answer Key
Chapter 10
C. 1.8-inch, 2.5-inch, and 3.5-inch
D. IEEE 1394, USB, and SCSI
Answer: C
Essay Quiz Answers
1. Discuss at least three advantages of serial ATA over parallel ATA.
Answer: Among the most important advantages of serial ATA are the ability to hot-swap
drives or devices, better airflow through use of the seven-wire cable, longer cable length (up
to 1 meter for SATA instead of 18 inches for PATA), faster data transfer through serial
bursts, and backward compatibility with PATA devices through the use of a SATA bridge.
2. Compare and contrast hardware and software RAID implementations.
Answer: Software RAID, built-in to operating systems such as Windows Server 2008,
Windows Server 2008 R2, or available from third-party vendors, is inexpensive to set up
because it does not require special controllers. Disk Management in Windows XP, Windows
Vista, and Windows 7 can do RAID 0, but not 1 or 5. With software RAID, the OS controls
the RAID functions, often resulting in slowdowns because the OS is overworked. Hardware
RAID, whether SCSI, ATA, or SATA, requires a controller chip that handles the RAID
functions. One advantage of hardware RAID is the ability to hot-swap a bad drive without
disturbing the OS. Hardware RAID also offers more RAID levels than software RAID and is
the preferred choice in spite of the extra cost.
3. Your friend Blaine has a Core i5 computer with a great video card. Currently, it has only a
320-GB hard drive and a CD-RW drive. Because he’s interested in video, he knows he needs
more storage capacity and wants to add a second hard drive. What advice will you give him
about selecting a new hard drive?
Answer: Blaine could install either an ATA or a SCSI hard drive. Dollar for performance
and capacity today, he should go with a SATA hard drive over a PATA or SCSI. Video
requires massive space, so the best option is to search for the current sweet spot on price per
terabyte. If it costs $50 for a 1-TB drive, for example, but $150 for a 1.5-TB drive, he would
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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+ Guide to 801: Managing and Troubleshooting PCs, Fourth Edition
(Exam 220-801)
Answer Key
Chapter 10
be better off taking the smaller drive at this time. That sweet spot will vary depending on
when your students are doing this lab.
For performance, the student should look at spindle speed and cache on the drive (or even
invest in a solid-state drive). A 10,000-RPM drive with a 32-MB cache, for example, will
outperform a 7200-RPM drive with the same amount of cache.
4. Hard drives include other features and characteristics not included in this chapter. Choose
one of the following topics and use the Internet to define and explain it to the class.

Zone bit recording

“Pixie dust” hard drives
Answer: Zone bit recording is a technique that places different numbers of sectors on
different tracks, with the outer tracks having higher recording density than the inner tracks. It
results in higher capacity drives that are more stable throughout. Both ATA and SCSI drives
use zone bit recording.
Technically called antiferromagnetically coupled (AFC) media, “pixie dust” hard drives were
invented by IBM. These drives used a thin layer of ruthenium inside the hard drives to enable
data to be packed more densely and thus dramatically increased the storage capacity of the
drives.
5. Your office is about to purchase ten new portable computers for the sales force and needs a
recommendation. Prepare a short essay that compares and contrasts platter-based and solidstate drives so your boss can pick what’s best for the staff.
Answer: The student should point out the good and bad points of the two technologies.
Platter-based drives give you the most capacity for your money, and the technology is stable.
On the other hand, solid-state drives give you better performance, no moving parts, and
lower electricity use. The cost per gigabyte is much higher with SSDs over HDDs.
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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+ Guide to 801: Managing and Troubleshooting PCs, Fourth Edition
(Exam 220-801)
Answer Key
Chapter 10
Cross Check Answers
Molex Connectors
Molex connectors have four wires: two black ground wires, a 5-volt red wire, and a 12-volt
yellow wire. The Molex connector is beveled on two corners, so it only inserts (easily) one way
into a socket. If you force it into the socket and apply power, you’ll toast whatever device you’ve
plugged it into, as the 12-volt circuit fries all the 5-volt electronics in its path.
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