data storage device

omputer Storage Devices



Storage Devices
Storage hardware provides permanent storage of information and programs for retrieval by the computer. The two main types of storage devices are disk drives and memory.

There are several types of disk drives: hard, floppy, magneto-optical, and compact.

Hard disk drive
Hard disk drives store information in magnetic particles embedded in a disk. Usually a permanent part of the computer, hard disk drives can store large amounts of information and retrieve that information very quickly.

Floppy disk drive
Floppy disk drives also store information in magnetic particles embedded in removable disks that may be floppy or rigid. Floppy disks store less information than a hard disk drive and retrieve the information at a much slower rate.

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Magneto-optical disc drive
Magneto-optical disc drives store information on removable discs that are sensitive to both laser light and magnetic fields. They can typically store as much information as hard disks, but they have slightly slower retrieval speeds.

Compact disc drive
Compact disc drives store information on pits burned into the surface of a disc of reflective material. CD-ROMs can store about as much information as a hard drive but have a slower rate of information retrieval. A digital video disc (DVD) looks and works like a CD-ROM but can store more than 7 times as much information.

Memory
Memory refers to the computer chips that store information for quick retrieval by the CPU. Random access memory RAM is used to store the information and instructions that operate the computer's programs.

Typically, programs are transferred from storage on a disk drive to RAM. RAM is also known as volatile memory because the information within the computer chips is lost when power to the computer is turned off.

Read-only memory (ROM) contains critical information and software that must be permanently available for computer operation, such as the operating system that directs the computer's actions from start up to shut down. ROM is called nonvolatile memory because the memory chips do not lose their information when power to the computer is turned off.

Some devices serve more than one purpose. For example, floppy disks may also be used as input devices if they contain information to be used and processed by the computer user. In addition, they can be used as output devices if the user wants to store the results of computations on them.
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