CompTIA A+ Practice Tests. Docter Quentin

B. In a RAID 5 array, each stripe places data on n– 1 disks, and parity computed from the data is placed on the remaining disk. The parity is interleaved across all the drives in the array so that neighboring stripes have parity on different disks. Said differently, you lose the equivalent of one hard disk worth of storage to hold the parity information.

D. The disable execute bit allows for the CPU to set aside an area of memory and refuse to execute any code placed into that memory location. Oftentimes this serves as a buffer area. The result is that malicious buffer overrun attacks are less likely to succeed.

D. Cloud printing allows for printing to a remote device, one that is not necessarily located on your local network. Essentially, you are using the Internet to send the print job from your device to the printer from which you want the output to come, and the printer can be located practically anywhere in the world.

A. Heat sinks are often made of metal, with many fins on them to increase surface area and dissipate heat faster. Many modern CPU heat sinks will have both a fan (which requires power) and the finned metal heat sink.

A, C. VGA is an analog video connector, and RJ-11 connectors are used with modems. Modems receive a digital signal from the computer but then modulate that signal to analog to transmit over common phone lines.

B. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth can be used to connect a printer temporarily to a single computer (or mobile device), and the connection does not have permanent status. This type of configuration is known as an ad hoc network connection.

A, B. With up-plugging, you can put a smaller PCIe card into a larger slot, even though it does not fill it up completely. For example, you can insert an x8 card into an x16 slot. The x8 card won’t completely fill the slot, but it will work at x8 speeds.

C. RAID 1 is called disk mirroring; it writes data simultaneously to both drives. If one drive fails, the other still has a working copy of the data. RAID 0 is disk striping and does not provide fault tolerance. RAID 5 is striping with parity and provides fault tolerance, but it requires three hard disks.

A. During the cleaning step, a rubber blade inside the toner cartridge scrapes any toner left on the drum into a used toner receptacle, and a fluorescent lamp discharges any remaining charge on the imaging drum. (Remember that the drum, being photosensitive, loses its charge when exposed to light.)

C. Plasma displays place electrodes in front of and behind sealed chambers full of inert gas (such as neon) and vaporized mercury. Current is run through the gas to ionize it and cause it to light up.

B. The audio connector on the front or top panel will use a round, 3.5mm connector. You can plug speakers or headphones into it.

D. With most dual-channel motherboards, RAM will work just fine if one module is installed. However, you will get better performance if you fill the entire bank.

D. There are four major versions of PCIe currently specified: 1.x, 2.x, 3.0, and 4.0. For the four versions, a single omnidirectional lane operates at a data rate of 250MBps, 500MBps, approximately 1GBps, and roughly 2GBps, respectively.

A, D. When installing or replacing a power supply, always make sure that it has enough wattage to power the components in the computer. In addition, it should have enough connectors to connect to all the components that require their own power. Dual rail and dual voltage are optional features.

D. Double-sided memory has chips on both sides of the RAM module instead of just on one side. It allows for doubling the amount of RAM on the module, so you get twice as much memory on one stick.

A, B. Faster hard drives transfer more data than slower hard drives, but there is no specific correlation between hard drive speed and its lifespan. The downsides to faster hard drives can be increased battery usage and heat production.

A, B. PCI expansion buses operate at 33MHz or 66MHz (version 2.1) over a 32-bit (4-byte) channel, resulting in data rates of 133MBps and 266MBps, respectively, with 133MBps being the most common, server architectures excluded.

C. Print servers need to have the appropriate drivers for all operating systems that will be clients. It’s possible that this print server does not have the Mac driver installed.