Database Multiple Choice Questions on “Physical Storage Media”.
1. Which of the following is a physical storage media?
a) Tape Storage
b) Optical Storage
c) Flash memory
d) All of the mentioned
Answer: d
Clarification: The storage media are classified by the speed with which data can be accessed, by the cost per unit of data to buy the medium, and by the medium’s reliability.
2. The _________ is the fastest and most costly form of storage, which is relatively small; its use is managed by the computer system hardware.
a) Cache
b) Disk
c) Main memory
d) Flash memory
Answer: a
Clarification: Cache storage is easy to access because it is closer to the processor.
3. Which of the following stores several gigabytes of data but usually lost when power failure?
a) Flash memory
b) Disk
c) Main memory
d) Secondary memory
Answer: c
Clarification: The contents of main memory are usually lost if a power failure or system crash occurs.
4. The flash memory storage used are
a) NOR Flash
b) OR Flash
c) AND Flash
d) All of the mentioned
Answer: a
Clarification: NAND flash has a much higher storage capacity for a given cost, and is widely used for data storage in devices such as cameras, music players, and cell phones.
5. __________ is increasingly being used in server systems to improve performance by caching frequently used data, since it provides faster access than disk, with larger storage capacity than main memory.
a) Flash memory
b) Disk
c) Main memory
d) Secondary memory
Answer: a
Clarification: Flash memory is of two types – NAND and NOR.
6. Which is the cheapest memory device in terms of costs/ bit?
a) Semiconductor memory
b) Magnetic disks
c) Compact disks
d) Magnetic tapes
Answer: c
Clarification: Compact disk is used for easy storage at lower cost.
7. The primary medium for the long-term online storage of data is the __________ where the entire database is stored on magnetic disk.
a) Semiconductor memory
b) Magnetic disks
c) Compact disks
d) Magnetic tapes
Answer: b
Clarification: The system must move the data from disk to main memory so that they can be accessed.
8. Optical disk _______ systems contain a few drives and numerous disks that can be loaded into one of the drives automatically (by a robot arm) on demand.
a) Tape Storage
b) Jukebox
c) Flash memory
d) All of the mentioned
Answer: b
Clarification: The most popular form of optical disks are CD and DVD.
9. There are “record-once” versions of the compact disk and digital video disk, which can be written only once; such disks are also called __________ disks.
a) Write-once, read-many (WORM)
b) CD-R
c) DVD-W
d) CD-ROM
Answer: a
Clarification: There are also “multiple-write” versions of compact disk (called CD-RW) and digital video disk (DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM), which can be written multiple times.
10. Tape storage is referred to as __________ storage.
a) Direct-access
b) Random-access
c) Sequential-access
d) All of the mentioned
Answer: c
Clarification: Tape storage is used primarily for backup and archival data.