For your fourth week in your course, you’ll be learning the basics of how filesystems actually – work, both in a Windows operating system and in a Linux one. You will be looking into the various filesystem types, making you understand their difference as to why it is different for each operating system. The course will cover information on disk partitioning, virtual memory, and so on, which are significant in the area of the IT Support Specialist. Other aspects that you’ll learn will include mounting and unmounting filesystems, checking disk usage, and file systems repair. Subsequently, you’ll end by learning how to partition and format the disk in Windows as well as in Linux.
Learning Objectives:
- Utilize Microsoft Windows to format and partition a disk.
- Common-capacity tools repair any filesystem and disk.
- Access disk usage and free space.
- Format and partition a disk in Linux.
PRACTICE QUIZ: FILESYSTEM TYPES
1. Which of the following is a characteristic of the FAT32 filesystem? Check all that apply.
- It doesn’t support files larger than 4GB. (CORRECT)
- It’s read and write compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux OSes. (CORRECT)
- Its filesystem size can’t be larger than 32GB. (CORRECT)
- It supports files up to 8GB in size.
Great job! However, all this palaver tag along with some restrictions of the FAT32 file system that deem it unsuitable for large data storage. Such restrictions are: a maximum file size of 4GB and a volume size limit of 8TB, which hinders the use of FAT32 in handling data with large files or wrapping volumes of data.
2. What’s the difference between a GPT and MBR partition table? Check all that apply.
- MBR only allows you to have volume sizes of 2TBs or less. (CORRECT)
- MBR is the new standard for partition tables.
- GPT doesn’t have a limit to the amount of partitions you can make. (CORRECT)
- GPT allows you to have volume sizes of 2TBs or greater. (CORRECT)
Nice work! The MBR still has some legacy features that are being gradually replaced with GPT.
3. Before you can store files on a hard drive, which of the following has to be done? Check all that apply.
- Nothing; hard drives can be used to store files out of the box
- Format a filesystem (CORRECT)
- Partition the disk (CORRECT)
- Mount the filesystem (CORRECT)
You got it! First off, before you can actually make use of a hard disk for storage space, that disk needs to be partitioned, formatted with a filesystem, and then mounted.
4. You want to format a partition with NTFS, and know that the data you’ll be storing will consist mostly of many small files. In order to use as little space as possible, should you choose a larger or smaller Allocation Unit Size during the formatting process?
- Larger allocation unit size
- Smaller allocation unit size (CORRECT)
Right on! A smaller block size saves less wasted space for small files.
5. In Linux, what could a device named /dev/sdb2 refer to?
- The first hard drive that was detected on the system
- The second partition of the second hard drive detected on the system (CORRECT)
- The second B hard drive
- The first partition of the second hard drive detected on the system
Nice work! Partitions of the device are numbered immediately after the name of the device drive.
6. True or false: If you want to save space on a Windows computer, deleting the pagefile.sys file is a good idea.
- TRUE
- FALSE (CORRECT)
You nailed it! Perhaps you could free up some space by deleting the pagefile.sys. This file contains the swap file in Windows, so removing it will cause your programs to rely solely on RAM. However, you may experience performance issues if you run out of memory.
7. Which of the following commands in Windows will create a symbolic link called “cauliflower” to a file named “broccoli.txt?”
- mklink cauliflower broccoli.txt (CORRECT)
- mklink broccoli.txt cauliflower
- mklink /H cauliflower broccoli.txt
Awesome! The mklink command is by default written in this format: mklink <link name> <file name>.
8. True or false: In modern versions of Windows, it’s necessary to periodically run a Disk Defragmentation process manually to keep your disk healthy.
- TRUE
- FALSE (CORRECT)
Great job! Now – in today’s advanced world, tasks like defragmentation are done automatically and run in the background by Windows for the users.
9. In Linux, what’s the difference between the commands df and du? Check all that apply.
- df is used to find the amount of free space on an entire machine. (CORRECT)
- du is used to find the amount of disk usage on a specific directory. (CORRECT)
- df is used to delete files in a directory.
- du is used to undelete files in a directory.
Awesome work! The df (disk free) command is used to check free space for the whole machine; while, du (disk usage) command helps you find out how much disk usage is being consumed by a particular directory.
10. In Linux, what’s the difference between a hardlink and a softlink? Check all that apply.
- A softlink points to a filename. (CORRECT)
- A hardlink points to an inode. (CORRECT)
- A hardlink points to a filename.
- You can view the hardlink count of a file using ls -l. (CORRECT)
Nice job! Soft links (symbolic links) are the files which point to other files; whereas, hard links are the souces directly pointed to their inodes.
11. Although NTFS is largely a self-healing filesystem, which of the following tools can you run to try to locate and repair serious disk corruption of the C: drive?
- chkdsk /r c: (CORRECT)
- chkdsk c:
- fsck c:
Right on! When combined with the switch /r, it checks the file system of the specified drive (in this case, C:) for errors and attempts to fix any it finds.
12. If you want to automatically mount a filesystem on computer startup, what file do you have to modify?
- /etc/fstab (CORRECT)
- /dev/sda
- /etc/sudoers
- /etc/group
Yep! To ensure specific filesystems are automatically mounted during startup, there should be a corresponding entry relating to the device in the /etc/fstab file.
13. In Linux, ____ is where we allocate virtual memory on our hard drives.
- Master Boot Record (MBR)
- /etc/passwd
- /etc/fstab
- swap space (CORRECT)
Yep! Swap area is used to make the hard disks act as virtual memory, running disk space as an additional RAM when physical memory is full.
14. In Linux, an ____ stores everything about a file, except for the filename and the file data.
- Answer: Inode (CORRECT)
You got it! Inodes hold the metadata concerning the files; all the details of a file without the name of the file and the actual file contents.