Mention several Storage devices.

 

Mention several Storage devices.

 

I. Magnetic

i. Fixed hard disk – has read/write heads that allows data to be written to or read from the disk surface.

ii. Portable hard disk – usually connected to the computer via a Universal Serial Bus (USB) port and can be disconnected and used on different computers.

iii. Floppy disk drive – used on some computers consisting thin disk of plastic which is housed in a plastic case with a window where the disk can be assessed.

iv. Magnetic tape – is a very thin strip of plastic coated in a magnetic layer read and written by a read/write head.

II. Optical

i. CD-ROM & DVD-ROM – are Read Only Memory (ROM) which means they cannot be written over and can only be read.

ii. CD-R & DVD-R – are the disk which are recordable only once and then it becomes a CR-ROM or DVD-ROM. The letter ‘R’ here means the disk is recordable only once.

iii. CD-RW & DVD-RW – The ‘RW’ means these disks are re-writable media and can be written over several times. Unlike CD-R/DVD-R they do not become ROMs.

iv. DVD-RAM – is a recent addition to the optical media group. Unlike the CD and DVD formats, DVD-RAMs have several discrete concentric tracks giving them the advantage that writing and reading can occur at the same time.

v. Blu-ray disk – has the largest capacity of all the optical media available and go up to 100 GB at present.

III. Solid State

i. Memory sticks / Pen drives – it can store several GBs of data and use the solid state technology usually connected through the USB port and power to operate it is drawn from the host computer.

ii. Flash memory card – is a form of Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory [EEPROM]. It is used to store photos in digital cameras. Mobile phones use them as memory cards.