Computer Memory and Storage

.NET uses Garbage Collection to automatically manage memory allocation and deallocation. The GC periodically scans for unused objects and reclaims their memory, preventing memory leaks and simplifying development.

CLARiiON CX series arrays typically have 15 disks per enclosure. This is a hardware-specific configuration detail for EMC CLARiiON storage systems. Options 8, 16, and 32 are incorrect for standard CLARiiON enclosures.

CLARiiON arrays use a dual-storage processor architecture for redundancy and performance. Having two storage processors (SPs) ensures high availability and load balancing. One processor would be a single point of failure, and zero or four processors are not standard configurations.

The EMC CLARiiON CX4-960 storage system is designed to scale up to a maximum of 960 disk drives, which is reflected directly in its model number.

Blu-Ray discs have the highest storage capacity among optical discs - a standard single-layer Blu-Ray holds 25GB compared to 4.7GB for DVD and 700MB for CD. Blu-Ray uses blue-violet laser with shorter wavelength for higher data density.

Virtual memory uses paging dynamically to move pages between disk and RAM as needed. The OS allocates page frames on demand, creating the illusion of a large contiguous memory space. This dynamic allocation is indeed a core concept of virtual memory management.

External fragmentation occurs with variable-sized memory allocation where free memory exists but can't satisfy allocation requests due to being scattered. Compaction relocates allocated blocks to contiguous regions, consolidating free space. Option A correctly identifies compaction as the solution.

CPU registers are the fastest memory as they're built directly into the CPU and operate at CPU frequency with zero latency for access. Cache memory (L1/L2/L3) is next fastest, followed by main memory (RAM), then hard disks which are orders of magnitude slower.

Digital Linear Tape (DLT), Advanced Intelligent Tape (AIT), and Linear Tape Open (LTO) are all well-known magnetic tape data storage technologies used for backup and archival. Since all three are valid tape storage types, option D is correct.

RAID 5 requires a minimum of 3 physical drives - it uses block-level striping with distributed parity. The '5' in RAID 5 doesn't indicate drive count; it's just the level designation. With 2 drives, you can only do RAID 0 (striping) or RAID 1 (mirroring).

Drive duplexing is a RAID-1 variant that uses two separate disk controllers to write data to mirrored drives simultaneously, providing better performance and fault tolerance than standard mirroring.

Drive duplexing uses two controllers to write data simultaneously to separate drives, providing both redundancy and improved performance over simple disk mirroring which typically uses a single controller. The dual-controller architecture allows concurrent writes and better throughput. Option C describes basic mirroring without the dual-controller benefit, D describes RAID 5 striping with parity, and B is too vague.

In C, the malloc() function allocates memory dynamically on the heap. The statement 'char *ptr = malloc(10);' allocates 10 bytes on the heap and stores the address in pointer ptr (which itself is on the stack). The stack is used for local variables, code segment for instructions, and data segment for static/global variables.

The code segment (also called the text segment) stores the program's compiled machine instructions and is read-only to prevent self-modification. Heap and stack are dynamic memory areas used for read-write operations during program execution, while the data segment contains initialized and uninitialized global/static variables that can be modified.