Secondary Storage Devices

A presentation by Amar Chand

Contents
Secondary Storage Devices : Introduction Classification Of Secondary Storage Devices Some Secondary Storage Devices Magnetic Disk Hard Disk Drive Zip Drive Floppy Disk Compact Disc Digital Versatile Disc Flash Disk (Pen Drive)

Secondary Storage Devices : Introduction

Secondary storage (also known as external memory or auxiliary storage), differs from primary storage in that it is not directly accessible by the CPU. The computer usually uses its input/ output channels to access secondary storage and transfers the desired data using intermediate area in primary storage. Secondary storage does not lose the data when the device is powered downit is non-volatile.

Classification Of Secondary Storage Devices

Two major types of secondary storage devices: 1. Direct Access Storage Devices (DASDs) Magnetic Discs Hard disks (high capacity, low cost, fast) Floppy disks (low capacity, lower cost, slow) Optical Disks CD-ROM = (Compact disc, read-only memory 2. Serial Devices Magnetic tapes (very fast sequential access)

Some Secondary Storage Devices

Hard Disk Drive Zip Drive Floppy Drive Compact Disc Digital Versatile Disc Flash Disk (Pen Drive)

Magnetic Disk

tracks

sector

Surface of disk showing tracks and sectors

Hard Disk Drive

A hard disk drive is a device for storing and retrieving digital information, primarily computer data. It consists of one or more rigid (hence "hard") rapidly rotating discs (platters) coated with magnetic material, and with magnetic heads arranged to write data to the surfaces and read it from them. Hard drives are classified as non-volatile, randomaccess, digital, magnetic, data storage devices. Introduced by IBM in 1956, hard disk drives have been the dominant device for secondary storage of data in general purpose computers since the early 1960s.

Zip Drive
A Zip drive is a small, portable disk drive used primarily for backing up and archiving personal computer files. The trademarked Zip drive was developed and is sold by Iomega Corporation. Zip drives and disks come in two sizes. The 100 megabyte size actually holds 100,431,872 bytes of data or the equivalent of 70 floppy diskettes. There is also a 250 megabyte drive and disk.

Floppy Disk
A soft magnetic disk; It is called floppy because it flops if you wave it (at least, the 5.25-inch variety does). Unlike most hard disks, floppy disks (often called floppies or diskettes) are portable, because you can remove them from a disk drive. Disk drives for floppy disks are called floppy drives. Floppy disks are slower to access than hard disks and have less storage capacity, but they are much less expensive. And most importantly, they are portable. Floppies come in three basic sizes:

Floppy Disk
8-inch: The first floppy disk design, invented by IBM in the late 1960s and used in the early 1970s as first a read-only format and then as a read-write format. The typical desktop/laptop computer does not use the 8-inch floppy disk. 5.25-inch: The common size for PCs made before 1987 and the predecessor to the 8-inch floppy disk. This type of floppy is generally capable of storing between 100K and 1.2MB (megabytes) of data. The most common sizes are 360K and 1.2MB. 3.5-inch: It can store from 400K to 1.4MB of data. The most common sizes for PCs are 720K (double-density) and 1.44MB (highdensity). Macintoshes support disks of 400K, 800K, and 1.2MB.

Compact Disc : CD
A compact disc (CD) is a small, portable, round medium made of molded polymer for electronically recording, storing, and playing back audio, video, text, and other information in digital form. Initially, CDs were read-only, but newer technology allows users to record as well.

Digital Versatile Disc : DVD

DVD is an optical disc technology with a 4.7 gigabyte storage capacity on a single-sided, one-layered disk, which is enough for a 133-minute movie. DVDs can be single- or double-sided, and can have two layers on each side. A double-sided, two-layered DVD will hold up to 17 gigabytes of video, audio, or other information.

Flash Disk (Pen Drive)

A USB is a plug-and-play portable storage device that uses flash memory and is lightweight enough to attach to a key chain. A USB drive can be used in place of a floppy disk, Zip drive disk, or CD. Unlike most removable drives, a USB drive does not require rebooting after it's attached, does not require batteries or an external power supply, and is not platform dependent. USB drives are available in capacities ranging up to about 65 gigabytes (GB), depending on manufacturer, in a corresponding range of prices.