Grade 11, 2 Edition Module 1.3 Storage, Memory And

Computers, part of your life – Grade 11, 2nd EditionStudy OpportunitiesModule 1.3 Storage, memory andprocessingWritten module activity1.When someone asks you how much memory your computer has, are they referring to primary or tosecondary storage?1.Primary storage2.What are DIMMs?2.RAM comes in ‘sticks’ called DIMMs (Dual Inline Memory Modules) that plug into the motherboard.3.Your father wrote down the following hardware specifications of a computer:Intel i7 Processor 2.3 GHzWindows 10 Home1 TB RAM4096 MB Hard drive(a) How many gigabytes (GB) does 4096 MB represent?(a) Approximately 4 GB as 1 GB 1024 (approximately 1000) MB(b) Which specifications are obviously incorrect? Briefly motivate your answer.(b) The hard drive and memory (RAM) specifications are probably swopped around by mistake, asmemory is usually measured in the low Gigabytes range (anything from 1 – 64 GB). Storage ismeasured in the mid-large (500 GB ) range of Gigabytes or low Terabytes (TB).(c) Why does one need so much less memory than storage? Motivate you answer by referring to thedifferent role that each of these performs in the functioning of a computer.(c) Only programs and data that you want to work with are loaded into memory. Storage is where apermanent record of our programs and data is kept (even when the computer is switched off), soit has to be far bigger than memory.4.Why do changes you are busy making to a Word document get lost if the power goes off, but theactual program never gets affected? Surely the program and the document both need to be loadedinto memory for you to work on the document?4.Yes, both need to be loaded into memory, but no changes are made to the program, as opposed to thedocument. So, when the power goes off, the original program is still (unchanged) on the disk, but thechanges in the document that were not saved to disk are ‘lost’. Memory is volatile – it only keeps itscontents whilst it is supplied with power.1

Computers, part of your life – Grade 11, 2nd EditionStudy Opportunities5.Why would a flash drive generally not be an ideal storage device for storing your movie collection?5.Digital movies use up a lot of storage space. So, while the capacities of flash drives are getting biggerall the time, a flash drive would soon become full if several movies were stored on it. Flash drives arebest used to transfer files from one computer to another, not as your main storage.6.Consider the following specifications for a computer:Intel Core i3 550 3.20 GHz750 GB HDDBlu-ray DVD Writer1 GB dedicated video graphics RAM23" Multimedia Touch Screen with Integrated WebcamIntegrated WLAN 802.11b/g/n and LANAdd aWrite down all the examples of storage listed in the specifications.6.DVD Writer and 750 GB hard disk drive (HDD).7.List three differences between memory and storage other than their function and typical size orcapacity.7.Three differences between memory and storage: Memory is faster than storage. Memory is volatile (it only keeps its contents whilst it is supplied with power) and storage is not. Memory is more expensive per GB than storage. Memory is electronic whereas storage can be optical (uses laser light, like CDs and DVDs), magnetic(like hard drives) or electronic (like flash drives).8.External hard drives have become a lot cheaper and are almost a ‘must-have’ for backing up the largeamounts of data stored on computers. They are often listed as 2.5" or 3.5".(a) What kind of port does an external hard drive typically connect to?(a) USB port(b) What do the 2.5" or 3.5" specifications refer to?(b) The size of the drive (in inches)(c) What is the main advantage of a 2.5" drive over a 3.5" drive?(c) 2.5" drives can get all the power they need from your USB port, whilst a 3.5" drive needs its ownpower supply – which means there is something extra you have to carry around with you.2

Computers, part of your life – Grade 11, 2nd EditionStudy Opportunities9.More and more people are using programs from the web directly and storing their data online oninternet servers.(a) Briefly explain how online storage works.(a) Online storage refers to disk space that is allocated to you on a server on the internet. You canupload any data/programs you like into the storage space assigned to you.(b) Give four advantages of online storage.(b) Advantages of online storage include the following: Accessible from anywhere you have access to the internet, on any device. Changes are all in one place so all devices always have the latest version of the data. Backup and security are managed by the storage provider. Easy to share files with other people. Data is still accessible even if your computer ‘crashes’, or is stolen, etc.(c) Give four disadvantages of online storage.(c) Disadvantages of online storage include the following: Only accessible when you have an internet connection. Some data (especially large files) may be unusable over slow connections. You have to pay for the data storage and the bandwidth used to upload and download thedata. You have no control over backup and security. If the company goes bankrupt you may lose all your data.(d) Give two examples of online storage facilities.(d) Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud and Microsoft’s OneDrive facility.10. Your father has made backup copies of all his files, and saved them in a separate folder on the samehard drive.(a) Give two reasons why it is not a good idea to store the backups and the original files on the samedrive.(a) If the drive gets damaged or the computer gets stolen, both the original and the backup copiesare lost.The backup files can be accidentally deleted.(b) Outline a better strategy to ensure the safety of the backups.(b) Preferably store the backups in a different place from where you keep your computer.3

Computers, part of your life – Grade 11, 2nd EditionStudy Opportunities11. CDs and DVDs are no longer considered to be ideal for creating backups.(a) Give two reasons why this is the case.(a) Using a CD or DVD is much slower and less convenient than using a portable drive. CDs and DVDshave less capacity than most flash drives and much less capacity than portable hard drives.(b) If a CD disc stores around 700 MB, and a DVD disc 4.7 GB, roughly how many CDs would it take tostore the same amount of data as a single DVD?(b) 7 discs(c) What do we mean by ’burning’ a CD?(c) Writing data to a CD disc(d) Give two types of portable storage media other than CDs and DVDs.(d) Portable/external hard drives and flash drives(e) Give two possible things you can try if you cannot write to a CD or DVD successfully.(e) Try to write (burn) at a lower speed.Make sure that you have enough storage space to create an image for the disc.Try not to use your computer for any other task whilst burning the CD or DVD.12. Explain why archiving files can free up disk space, while making backups of files will not, by explainingthe difference between these two concepts. Refer to suitable examples to explain your answer.12. Backups are made so that you have a copy or ‘duplicate’ of files in case something goes wrong (a file isdeleted or the current version is corrupt or overwritten, etc.). This is a process that can be automated.Archiving refers to storing files that are static (not going to be changed), usually onto a secondarysystem such as a DVD. For example, you might make a PDF copy of all the financial reports of yourcompany from the last five years and store them on DVD as you are not likely to reference them onceyou have completed your tax returns. In other words, archiving is a ‘manual’ process where you takefiles that are not going to change, or that are not likely to be used in the near future, and move themoff the main system to free up disk space.13. Your mother’s hard drive at work is getting very full and her boss advised her to defragment her diskevery morning to free up disk space on the hard drive.(a) Briefly explain what disk fragmentation is and why it can be a problem for a computer user.(a) The more you use your computer (adding programs, creating, moving, deleting files), the morethe files (and parts of the files) get scattered on the disk. The more scattered the file parts are, theslower your computer becomes. This is known as disk fragmentation.(b) What should your mother use to defragment her hard drive, and where can she obtain this?(b) A disk defragmenter.She could use the one supplied with her operating system (e.g. Windows), but it is possible to buyor download more powerful versions of the software.4

Computers, part of your life – Grade 11, 2nd EditionStudy Opportunities(c) Will defragmenting the hard drive free up disk space as suggested by your mother’s boss?Motivate your answer by briefly outlining what disk defragmentation involves.(c) No, disk defragmentation does not free up disk space. It simply rearranges the files’ parts so theyare quicker to load from the disk.(d) Is it is necessary to defragment your hard drive every day?(d) No, when you start the disk defragmenter utility, it will look at your disk and tell you whatpercentage of the hard drive is fragmented and whether it needs to be defragmented.14. Give three ways in which Disk Cleanup will help to free up space on a computer’s hard drive.14. Temporary files created by Windows and downloaded from the internet can be removed.The Recycle Bin can be emptied to reclaim disk space.Components of Windows and other installed programs that you are not using or seldom use can beuninstalled.15. Your mother’s firm is giving away a motherboard with a quad core processor.(a) Briefly explain what a motherboard is by referring to its function.(a) The motherboard is a large circuit board that all the other components plug into. It provides away for all the other components to communicate with each other.(b) Briefly explain the significance of ‘quad core’ in the description of the processor.(b) This term indicates how many physical CPUs are on the chip – 4 in this case.16. What is the function of ROM?16. ROM holds the programs that control the basic hardware of the computer and are used to get thecomputer ready for you to use when you switch it on.17. Briefly describe what happens when a computer is switched on.17. When the computer is switched on, the instructions in the ROM are sent to the CPU so it can start theboot process.The boot program then checks the hardware of the computer for errors.If an error occurs here the computer will usually not start – instead it will tell you what the problem is,either by beeping or by displaying an error message on the screen.The boot program then looks for the program used for loading the operating system on the specifiedstorage device. The operating system is loaded.5

May 01, 2018 · 7. Three differences between memory and storage: Memory is faster than storage. Memory is volatile (it only keeps its contents whilst it is supplied with power) and storage is not. Memory is more expensive per GB than storage. Memory is electronic whereas storage can b