Which one of the following statement is/are false?

Answer: The false statement is: Linked list free memory management requires extra hardware.

• The memory usage of bitmapped free memory management depends on the amount of memory in the disk. A bitmap uses one bit per block being tracked, so its size is proportional to the number of blocks (i.e., the storage capacity).

• Linked list free memory management requires extra hardware. This is incorrect. A free-list is a software data structure stored in memory and managed by the OS; it does not need special hardware. It does require extra pointer storage and CPU work to update pointers, but not additional hardware components.

• Linked list free memory management incurs more overhead when memory is freed. This is true because freeing often involves pointer updates and possibly coalescing adjacent free blocks, which is more work than simply flipping a bit in a bitmap.

• In hard-link implementation, OS maintains a link count initialized to 1. This is true: when a file is created the OS sets its link count to one; creating or removing hard links increments or decrements the count, and the file is removed when the count reaches zero.