Alternatively referred to as digital storage, storage, storage media, or storage medium, a storage device is anyhardware capable of holding information either temporarily or permanently. The picture shows an example of a Drobo, an external secondary storage device.
There are two types of storage devices used with computers: aprimary storage device, such as RAM, and a secondary storagedevice, like a hard drive. Secondary storage can be removable,internal, or external storage.
Examples of computer storage
Magnetic storage devices
Today, magnetic storage is one of the most common types of storage used with computers and is the technology that many computer hard drives use.
Optical storage devices
Another common storage is optical storage, which uses lasers and lights as its method of reading and writing data.
Flash memory devices
Flash memory has started to replace magnetic media as it becomes cheaper as it is the more efficient and reliable solution.
Online and cloud
Storing data online and in cloud storage is becoming popular as people need to access their data from more than one device.
Paper storage
Early computers had no method of using any of the above technologies for storing information and had to rely on paper. Today, these forms of storage are rarely used or found. In the picture to the right is an example of a woman entering data to a punch card using a punch card machine.Why so many different storage devices?
As computers advance so do the requirements for storage space and the technologies used to store data. For example, when punch cards were first used in early computers the magnetic media used for floppy disks was not available. After floppy diskettes had been released, they were replaced by CD-ROM drives, which were replaced by DVD drives, which have been replaced by flash drives.
Each advancement of storage devices gives a computer the ability to store more data, save data faster, and access the saved data faster.
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