Q8Operating System
Question
2 marks
Define Spooling.
Answer
Spooling (Simultaneous Peripheral Operations Online) is a technique where data is temporarily stored on disk for use by a slow peripheral device like a printer.
Spooling is a process in which data is temporarily held in a buffer (usually on disk — the spool) to be used and executed by a device, program, or system that cannot accept the data for processing at the same rate it is sent. The most classic example is print spooling: print jobs from multiple users are stored in a disk queue, and the printer processes them one at a time. This allows multiple users to submit print jobs concurrently without waiting. Spooling effectively overlaps I/O operations with computation, improving overall efficiency.