WGU D686 Practice Questions with 100%
Correct Answers
Mandary Access Control ( MAC )
Mandary access control is a type of access control wherein access is controlled by a central
authority.
What kind of access control gives full authority to the owner of the file?
Discretionary Access Control
Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
With DAC, the owner of the file decides permissions of the file.
Which operating system uses /Volumes directory for mounting external devices?
MacOS
What problem are "allocation methods" trying to solve?
How do we allocate space to files in secondary storage in a way that maximizes speed but
also utilizes the free space in an efficient way.
What advantage does contiguous allocation have in terms of access times?
Since all file blocks are stored next to each other, the disk head does not need to move
around, making sequential reading and writing extremely fast.
What's the main problem with contiguous allocation?
External fragmentation and limited file growth.
What is compaction?
, Compaction is a technique to collect all the free memory present in the form of fragments
into one large chunk of free memory, which can be used to run other processes.
How does compaction work?
It does that by moving all the processes towards one end of the memory and all the available
free space towards the other end of the memory so that it becomes contiguous.
What is linked allocation?
Linked allocation is a disk allocation strategy where a file is stored as a linked list of blocks
scattered across the disk. Instead of requiring contiguous space, each block contains a pointer
to the next block, allowing files to be stored non-contiguously.
Why does linked allocation imply lower access speed?
Sequential access requires following pointers, increasing disk seek time.
What is the advantage of clustering in file systems?
Reduces File System Overhead - Instead of tracking each block separately, the file system
manages clusters, reducing bookkeeping.
Improves Read/Write Efficiency - Since files are stored in larger chunks, the disk head moves
less frequently, improving performance.
How does clustering work in file systems?
The disk is divided into clusters (e.g., 4 KB per cluster).
Each file is allocated clusters instead of blocks (even if the file is smaller than a cluster).
The OS tracks clusters in a File Allocation Table (FAT) or index structure (NTFS, EXT4,
etc.).
Correct Answers
Mandary Access Control ( MAC )
Mandary access control is a type of access control wherein access is controlled by a central
authority.
What kind of access control gives full authority to the owner of the file?
Discretionary Access Control
Discretionary Access Control (DAC)
With DAC, the owner of the file decides permissions of the file.
Which operating system uses /Volumes directory for mounting external devices?
MacOS
What problem are "allocation methods" trying to solve?
How do we allocate space to files in secondary storage in a way that maximizes speed but
also utilizes the free space in an efficient way.
What advantage does contiguous allocation have in terms of access times?
Since all file blocks are stored next to each other, the disk head does not need to move
around, making sequential reading and writing extremely fast.
What's the main problem with contiguous allocation?
External fragmentation and limited file growth.
What is compaction?
, Compaction is a technique to collect all the free memory present in the form of fragments
into one large chunk of free memory, which can be used to run other processes.
How does compaction work?
It does that by moving all the processes towards one end of the memory and all the available
free space towards the other end of the memory so that it becomes contiguous.
What is linked allocation?
Linked allocation is a disk allocation strategy where a file is stored as a linked list of blocks
scattered across the disk. Instead of requiring contiguous space, each block contains a pointer
to the next block, allowing files to be stored non-contiguously.
Why does linked allocation imply lower access speed?
Sequential access requires following pointers, increasing disk seek time.
What is the advantage of clustering in file systems?
Reduces File System Overhead - Instead of tracking each block separately, the file system
manages clusters, reducing bookkeeping.
Improves Read/Write Efficiency - Since files are stored in larger chunks, the disk head moves
less frequently, improving performance.
How does clustering work in file systems?
The disk is divided into clusters (e.g., 4 KB per cluster).
Each file is allocated clusters instead of blocks (even if the file is smaller than a cluster).
The OS tracks clusters in a File Allocation Table (FAT) or index structure (NTFS, EXT4,
etc.).
