Practice Storage in CS Thinking

Use these practice problems to test your method after reviewing the concept explanation and worked examples.

Quick Recap

Storage is the part of a computing system that keeps data over time, even when the power is turned off. Files, photos, apps, and operating systems all live in storage devices such as SSDs, hard drives, and flash memory.

Memory is the desk you are working on right now. Storage is the filing cabinet that keeps your work after you leave.

Showing a random 20 of 50 problems.

Example 1

challenge
A camera shoots 12 MB photos at 30 per second of burst. How much storage, in GB, does 60 seconds of burst use? (1 GB = 1024 MB)

Example 2

easy
Storage is described as ____, meaning data survives power-off.

Example 3

challenge
A log grows 50 MB per day. Starting empty, after how many whole days does it first exceed 1 GB? (1 GB = 1024 MB)

Example 4

hard
Compression reduces a 10 GB log to 1.5 GB. What is the compression ratio (original / compressed) and percent savings?

Example 5

medium
Backing up 8 GB of data over a link that copies 1 GB per minute takes how many minutes?

Example 6

medium
A 0.5 GB folder and a 256 MB folder: total in MB? (1 GB = 1024 MB)

Example 7

challenge
A backup strategy keeps 7 daily, 4 weekly, and 12 monthly snapshots. Each is 50 GB. What is total snapshot storage (worst case, no deduplication)?

Example 8

medium
A drive has 500 GB total, 320 GB used. What percentage is free?

Example 9

medium
A camera produces 8 MB photos. How many photos fit on a 4 GB card? (1 GB = 1024 MB)

Example 10

medium
A 16 KB block on disk stores small files. A file of 2 KB occupies how much disk space due to block allocation?

Example 11

hard
A sensor records 200 bytes every 10 seconds. How many MB does it produce per day? (1 MB = 102421024^2 bytes)

Example 12

medium
A photo at 5 MB compresses to 1 MB with JPEG. How many compressed photos fit in 100 MB?

Example 13

medium
A song is 5 MB. Album of 12 songs. How many MB for the album, and how many albums fit on a 1 GB player? (1 GB = 1024 MB)

Example 14

medium
How many photos of 5 MB each fit in 1 GB of free space? (1 GB = 1024 MB)

Example 15

easy
How many MB are in 1 GB?

Example 16

medium
A backup transfers at 50 MB per second. How long to back up 30 GB? (1 GB = 1024 MB)

Example 17

medium
You have 100 GB free and want to store a 0.1 TB game. Does it fit? (1 TB = 1024 GB)

Example 18

medium
What is the term for storage that lives on remote servers and is accessed over the internet?

Example 19

easy
A photo is 3 MB. How many bytes is that? (1 MB = 1024 KB, 1 KB = 1024 bytes)

Example 20

medium
Text file of 2000 characters at 1 byte per character: how many bytes, and is that under 2 KB?