Question

How is a hardware failure such as memory fault different than an interrupt from the hard disk controller signaling that a data transfer has completed? (Three or four sentences are sufficient)

Answer 1

Answer)

How is a hardware failure such as memory fault different than an interrupt from the hard disk controller signaling that a data transfer has completed?

Hardware failure such as memory faults can cause permanent data loss. With many processes running on the system, there is always a chance for memory fault and corrupting the data on the hard disk. These have to be detected asap and resolved to not lose any data because of memory fault. An interrupt is a signal to processor emitted by the hard disk in this occasion to indicate and event such as a data transfer has successfully completed.

In this case, the interrupt ends here finishing the activity of the data transfer. Hardware interrupt such as from hard disks can be asynchronous and can occur anytime and the hardware has to react to the interrupt request. Here, the interrupt is that data transfer is complete. Thus this is how the hardware failure such as memory fault different than an interrupt from the hard disk controller signaling that a data transfer has completed.