Data storage: past paper questions

Where the questions come from

• Question 6May/June 2026, paper 12Structured10 marks

  A student has an application (app) on their smartphone that can be used to identify the name of a flower.

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• Question 3Oct/Nov 2025, paper 11Structured11 marks

  A student has a portable device. He uses an on-screen keyboard to write messages to his friend.

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• Question 2Oct/Nov 2024, paper 11Structured10 marks

  A student has a smartphone. Identify two input devices that can be built into the smartphone.

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• Question 8Oct/Nov 2023, paper 11Structured8 marks

  Storage can be described as being magnetic, solid-state or optical.

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• Question 1Oct/Nov 2025, paper 12Structured13 marks

  A toy store gives each of the toys it sells a unique code. The codes are 3-digit hexadecimal codes, for example A4B. A computer is used to store a database of the codes.

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• Question 4Oct/Nov 2024, paper 12Structured13 marks

  A student has a smartwatch. The smartwatch has built-in input and output devices. Identify two input devices that can be built into the smartwatch.

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• Question 13Oct/Nov 2023, paper 12Structured7 marks

  Storage and memory are important components of a computer system. Primary storage is one type of storage in a computer system. Tick (✓) one box to show which is an example of primary storage.

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• Question 7Oct/Nov 2025, paper 12Structured16 marks

  A house has a smart speaker that can take voice commands as input. A person in the house can tell the smart speaker to play music or audio books. The smart speaker cannot be described as a robot.

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• Question 1Oct/Nov 2024, paper 13Structured15 marks

  Data can be measured using different units of storage. Tick (✓) one box to show which of the following is the largest unit of data storage.

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• Question 2Oct/Nov 2025, paper 13Structured14 marks

  A computer with a Von Neumann architecture has a central processing unit (CPU) that carries out the fetch-decode-execute (FDE) cycle. Give the name of the first register that is used in the fetch part of the cycle.

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• Question 1May/June 2024, paper 11Structured4 marks

  A student has a portable tablet computer. Identify two input devices that could be built into the portable tablet computer.

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• Question 9Oct/Nov 2023, paper 13Structured9 marks

  A computer has secondary storage. The table contains statements about secondary storage. Complete the table by writing the type of secondary storage that applies to each statement.

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• Question 7May/June 2025, paper 11Structured11 marks

  A student’s computer has primary storage. One example of primary storage is random access memory (RAM). Identify one other example of primary storage.

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• Question 5May/June 2024, paper 11Structured11 marks

  A computer uses both random access memory (RAM) and secondary storage. State the purpose of secondary storage.

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• Question 3May/June 2023, paper 11Structured4 marks

  Secondary storage devices are used to store data in a computer. Circle three components that are secondary storage devices.

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• Question 1May/June 2025, paper 12Structured13 marks

  A computer stores data temporarily in random access memory (RAM). RAM is one example of primary storage. Give one other example of primary storage.

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• Question 9May/June 2024, paper 12Structured8 marks

  A company uses both solid-state and optical secondary storage.

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• Question 4May/June 2023, paper 12Structured9 marks

  A student uses a mobile phone to take photographs for a school project. The student needs to transmit the photographs to their computer. They could use serial data transmission or parallel data transmission to transmit the photographs.

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• Question 2May/June 2025, paper 13Structured6 marks

  A company employee is editing a video for the company’s website. Data is stored in the random access memory (RAM) when the video is edited. The RAM becomes full and pages of data are transmitted to a partitioned section of the secondary storage to stop the computer from crashing.

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• Question 4May/June 2024, paper 13Structured6 marks

  The table contains statements about types of secondary storage. Complete the table by writing the correct type of secondary storage for each statement.

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• Question 10May/June 2023, paper 12Structured5 marks

  A user has both system software and application software installed on their computer. Describe the difference between system software and application software.

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• Question 2May/June 2023, paper 13Structured16 marks

  A library has a self-checkout system that allows customers to register books that they want to borrow. The self-checkout system has a central processing unit (CPU). The CPU has two cores.

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