Learning units 11,12,13

Question 1

Function of Windows System Protection

Answer 1

Automatically backs up system files and stores them at regular intervals

Question 2

Function of System Restore (rstrui.exe)

Answer 2

Restores the system to its condition at the time a restore point was made

Question 3

Define Low-level formatting (Logical Block Addressing (LBA))

Answer 3

a process (usually performed at the factory) that organizes the space in a long series of logical blocks

Question 4

Two partitioning systems

Answer 4

-MBR partitions : keeps a map of partitions in a partition table stored at the beginning of the hard drive called the MBR

Can have up to three primary partitions (also called volumes)

A fourth partition (called extended partition) can hold one or more volumes called logical drives

-GPT partitions – the Globally Unique Identifier Partition Table (GUID or GPT) system can support up to 128 partitions and is required for drives larger than 2.2 TB
First sector in a GPT system contains the protective MBR, which provides information to legacy software that does not support GPT

Question 5

Before a partition or drive can be used it must be

Answer 5

Assigned a drive letter (C: or D:)
Formatted using a file system

Question 6

What is file system?

Answer 6

the overall structure an OS uses to name, store, and organize files on a drive

Question 7

File systems supported by Windows

Answer 7

NTFS – uses smaller allocation unit or cluster sizes than FAT32 (more efficient)

ReFS – Resilient File System (ReFS) is designed to improve on the NTFS file system by offering better fault tolerance and allowing for better compatibility with virtualization and data redundancy

NFS – Network File System is a client/server file system that supports file sharing over a network across platforms

exFAT – use for large external storage devices to be used with other operating systems

FAT32 – use for small hard drives or USB flash drives

CDFS (Compact Disc File System) and UDF – CDFS is an older file system used by optical discs and is being replaced by UDF (Universal Disc Format)

Question 8

How Partitions are Used During the Boot

Answer 8

MBR hard drives:
one of the primary partitions is designated the active partition, which is the bootable partition that startup BIOS/UEFI look to when searching for an OS

In GPT system, the bootable partition is called the EFI System Partition (ESP)
UEFI turns to it to find and start the OS

Question 9

Define a mounted drive

Answer 9

A mounted drive is a volume accessible by a folder on another volume

So the folder has more available space

Useful when a folder is on a volume that is too small to hold all the data

Question 10

Three uses of dynamic disks

Answer 10

For better reliability, configure a hard drive as a dynamic disk and allocate the space as a simple volume

Implement dynamic disks on multiple hard drives to extend a volume across these drives (called spanning)

Can be used to piece data across multiple hard drives to improve performance and/or provide fault tolerance

Question 11

Define RAID

Answer 11

the technology to configure two or more hard drives to work together as an array of drives

Question 12

Explain stripping/RAID 0

Answer 12

-Joining hard drives to improve performance is

-work is shared between two hard drives but does not provide fault tolerance

Question 13

Explain mirroring/RAID 1

Answer 13

-Copying one hard drive to another as a backup

-improves fault tolerance because if one drive fails, you have another copy

Question 14

Storage options

Answer 14

Simple
Two-way mirroring
Three-way mirroring
Parity

Question 15

Drive and volume statuses

Answer 15

Healthy
Failed
Online
Active

Question 16

What does to defragment mean

Answer 16

to rearrange fragments or parts of files on the drive so each file is stored on the drive in contiguous clusters

Question 17

What does to trim mean

Answer 17

to erase a block on the drive that is filled with unused data

Question 18

two levels of command prompt windows

Answer 18

-Standard window – the default directory is the currently signed-in user’s folder

-Elevated window – requires the user to be signed-in as an administrator

Question 19

The Windows Shell

Answer 19

-The portion of an OS that relates to the user and to applications

-Provides tools such as File Explorer and the Windows desktop

-Made up of subsystems that operate in user mode

Question 20

The Windows Kernel

Answer 20

Responsible for interacting with hardware

Known as the “core” of the OS

Question 21

Two main components

Answer 21

-HAL (hardware abstraction layer) – layer closest to hardware

-Executive services interface – operate between the user mode subsystems and the HAL

Question 22

Define a process

Answer 22

a program that is running under the authority of the shell, together with the system resources assigned to it

Question 23

Define a thread

Answer 23

A request made by a process for resources to the Win32 subsystem

Question 24

Define multithreading

Answer 24

A process with more than one thread

Question 25

Five files used to build registry

Answer 25

SAM (Security Accounts Manager)
SECURITY,
SOFTWARE, SYSTEM
DEFAULT hives

Question 26

Five keys

Answer 26

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (HKLM)
Contains hardware, software, and security data

HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG (HKCC)
Used to identify each hardware device

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT (HKCR)
Used to determine which application opens

HKEY_USERS (HKU)
Contains data about all users

HKEY_CURRENT_USER (HKCU)
Contains data about the current user

Question 27

Ways to back up the registry

Answer 27

Use System Protection to create a restore point

Back up a single registry key just before editing the key

Question 28

Two fundamental ways to boot a computer are

Answer 28

Soft boot (warm boot): using the OS to reboot

Hard boot (cold boot): turning on the power with the on/off switch

Question 29

.Winlogon.exe does the following

Answer 29

-Starts the Service Control Manager (services.exe)

-Starts the Local Security Authority process (lsass.exe)

-Launches userinit.exe