Utilities questions and answers
Questions
Q1. Define 'utility program'.
Q2. What happens when you 'format a disk'?
Q3. When you run the 'disk deframentation' utility, what actually happens to files?
Q4. Why is a 'System use' utility useful?
Q5. What is a screensaver?
Q6. Why are screensavers used?
Q7. What does a 'file handler' utility do?
Q8. What is a zip (compression) file?
Q9. Why are compressed files useful?
Q10. What is a driver?
Answers
Q1. A utility program is a system program designer to perform a commonplace task.
Q2. The disk is checked to see if it can be written to and read from and then divided up into sections. Each section is given an address.
Q3. Files are typically broken up into chunks and stored in different places all over a disk. This makes retrieving a file slow. The defrag routine moves chinks of files closer to each other, to speed up getting back a file.
Q4. System use utilities tell you e.g. how much RAM you have, how much storage you have left on your hard disk.
Q5. A screensaver comes on in place of what is displayed on a screen after a set time.
Q6. Screensavers can prevent ghost images being burnt into VDUs and can be password protected, to protect against casual access if you step away from your computer for a while.
Q7. File handlers e.g. transfer files between storage and RAM, delete files, copy files and so on.
Q8. A compression file is one that has had unnecessary parts removed e.g. space, to make the file smaller.
Q9. Smaller files are faster to transmit across networks, don't take as long to save and you can fit more compressed data onto a storage device than the same uncompressed data.
Q10. A driver is a piece of software for a peripheral. It allows the peripheral to communicate with the operating system.