ITPEC FE Morning October 2022 Question 13
Topic: Computer Component
There is a disk drive that has a capacity of 8 GB. The drive has five (5) platters with two (2) surfaces: 10,000 tracks per surface and 200 sectors per track. How many bytes are in each sector? Here, 1 GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes.
Explanation
400 bytes — divide the capacity by the total number of sectors on all surfaces.
- •Surfaces: 5 × 2 = 10
- •Sectors: 10 × 10,000 × 200 = 20,000,000
- •Bytes per sector: 8,000,000,000 ÷ 20,000,000 = 400
Answer (c)
Why not others:
- •(d) 800 — counts one surface per platter, 5 surfaces, so half the sectors and twice the bytes per sector
- •(b) 200 — counts twice as many sectors as exist, as if there were 20 surfaces
- •(a) 100 — would need 80 million sectors, four times the drive's real count
Key rule: Total sectors = platters × surfaces per platter × tracks per surface × sectors per track; capacity divided by that gives the sector size.
Computer Component · AI-written, may contain errors
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