Parity is:
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a system for balancing the voltage coming out of the power supply
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a byte stored in the FAT to indicated remaining slots
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the last setting for controlling hard drive configuration of IDE drives in the CMOS
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an extra bit stored with data in RAM that is used to check for errors when the data is read back
Reveal answer
Fill a bubble to check yourself
D
Correct answer
Explanation
Parity is an error-detection mechanism where an extra bit is added to each byte of data. The parity bit is set so that the total number of 1-bits is either always even (even parity) or always odd (odd parity). When data is read back, the parity is recalculated and compared to detect single-bit errors. Options A, B, and C describe voltage regulation, FAT entries, and CMOS settings respectively - unrelated to parity.