Module 8: Mass Storage Technologies
Week of Thu, Sep 17 · module closes Mon, Sep 21 · 10 points
Take Meerk's quiz for Module 8
This module's items
- M8 Discussiondue Thu, Sep 17 · 10 pts
Exact due times are in Canvas.
Know these cold
- HDDs: 5400 RPM (quiet, low power) and 7200 RPM (faster, more heat) — sequential reads ~150 MB/s.
- SATA III SSDs: no moving parts, up to ~550 MB/s sequential — 6 Gbps interface limit.
- NVMe SSDs: PCIe 3.0 x4 = ~3,500 MB/s; PCIe 4.0 x4 = ~7,000 MB/s.
- RAID 0 = striping (performance, no redundancy); RAID 1 = mirroring (redundancy, 50% capacity).
- RAID 5 needs 3+ drives — distributed parity; survives one drive failure.
- IOPS measures random I/O operations per second — critical for OS and database drives.
Meerk's quiz — open the Module 8 gate
10 questions, no time limit. 85% on your first attempt in a 24-hour window opens the gate. Retakes inside the window are practice — they help you learn, they don't count. Work alone; the point is to know it, not to have seen it.
Dinner Table Question
Ask at home: A server has RAID 5 with four 4 TB drives. One fails. Can you recover the data? How much usable space did the array have?
En español: Un servidor tiene RAID 5 con cuatro discos de 4 TB. Uno falla. Puedes recuperar los datos? Cuanto espacio usable tenia el arreglo?