A. Buffering improves performance but increases memory usage. Here's why the other options are incorrect: B. Buffering decreases performance but reduces memory usage: This is the opposite of the actual effect. Buffering reduces the number of individual disk accesses, which can significantly improve performance, especially for frequent small reads/writes. However, it does use some memory to store the buffer. C. Buffering has no impact on performance or memory usage: Buffering plays a crucial role in file I/O performance. It reduces disk access overhead, but it does introduce some memory usage for the buffer itself. D. Buffering is only used for network I/O, not file I/O: Buffering is a valuable technique for both network and file I/O. It helps optimize data transfer by reducing the number of low-level I/O operations. Benefits of Buffering: Reduced Disk Access: By using a buffer, you can group multiple smaller read/write requests into a single larger operation for the disk. This significantly reduces the overhead of individual disk accesses, which can be a bottleneck in file I/O. Improved Performance: Due to fewer disk accesses, buffering generally leads to faster file I/O 43/97 operations, especially when dealing with large files or frequent small reads/writes. Memory Usage: While buffering offers performance benefits, it does come with some memory overhead. The buffer itself consumes memory to store the data being read or written. The size of the buffer can be configured for some stream classes in Java.
