Which type of devices are used to store data?

What Does Storage Device Mean?

A storage device is any type of computing hardware that is used for storing, porting or extracting data files and objects. Storage devices can hold and store information both temporarily and permanently. They may be internal or external to a computer, server or computing device.

A storage device may also be known as a storage medium or storage media depending on whether it is seen as discrete in nature (for example, “a hard drive” versus “some hard drive space.”)

Techopedia Explains Storage Device

Storage devices are one of the core components of any computing device. They store virtually all of the data and applications on a computer, except for hardware firmware which is generally managed through separate read-only memory or ROM.

Storage devices are available in different forms, depending on the type of underlying device. For example, a standard computer has multiple storage devices including RAM, a cache, and a hard disk. The same device may also have optical disk drives and externally connected USB drives.

There are two different types of storage devices:

Primary storage devices: Generally smaller in size, primary storage devices are designed to hold data temporarily and are internal to the computer. They have the fastest data access speed. These types of devices include RAM and cache memory.

Secondary storage devices: Secondary storage devices usually have larger storage capacity, and they store data permanently. They can be either internal or external to the computer. These types of devices include the hard disk, the optical disk drive and USB storage device.

Brief History of Storage Devices

In order to really understand what storage devices used to look like and what they look like now, it can be helpful to look at a history of evolving storage devices in general.

Early storage devices were primitive mechanical systems based on items like punch cards and later, magnetic tape. They presented binary through physical media.

These became largely obsolete when other digital media was created. First, there were floppy disks and diskettes, then there were compact discs that could hold large amounts of binary in digital formats.

At the same time, computers and other devices continued to be made with primary hard drives, where a traditional platter is read by an arm in order to read and write data.

Eventually, a new option emerged called the solid-state drive or SSD.

The New Paradigm: Solid-State Drives and Storage Devices

New solid-state drives and storage devices store data in a way that's different from the traditional platter hard drive.

Solid-state storage involves running electrical currents through a substrate instead of using a spinning hard drive platter. It eliminates some of the mechanical parts of the traditional hard drive. It also makes the storage of digital information much more efficient.

New computers may have solid-state drives as a primary device. New flash drives and thumb drives use solid-state storage for secondary devices.

At the same time, companies have been updating how they approach storage device engineering for broader enterprise systems. Systems like Redundant Array of Independent Disk (RAID) designs allow companies to use a series of drives to store information in "slices."

Then the storage area network (SAN) evolved, which links together individual storage devices to provide network storage. Something called "storage fabric" uses fiber channel switching to build network storage for enterprise systems.

Cloud and Virtual Storage

One of the latest advances in storage media involves the cloud and virtualization. With modern systems, users can store data virtually, rather than using physical hardware on-site. For example, Amazon Web Services offers AWS S3, a type of object storage where instead of being stored in physical hard drive devices, customers store data in virtual buckets. These types of innovations represent the frontier of where storage media is going.

Computers use a variety of data storage devices that are classified in two ways: one is whether they retain the data if there is no electricity and the other is how close they are to the processor (CPU). Both types of storage are needed in all computers. In a personal computer, memory does not retain data when the electricity is off, but while it is on, it enables quick access to open files. A storage drive, however, allows you to permanently store data, so it's available each time you turn on the computer.

Volatile and non-volatile storage

The first classification of computer data storage is between volatile and non-volatile storage. An example of volatile storage is memory (RAM) that stores data only until there is no electricity powering the device. RAM allows your computer to have multiple files open and access any of them instantly. Some other examples of volatile storage devices are calculators.

Non-volatile storage is storage that maintains the data even when there is no electricity powering the device. An example is a hard disk drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD) that holds all of the data saved to your computer. There is other non-volatile storage, such as DVDs or flash drives. For more information about the difference between memory and storage, read here.

Storage hierarchy

Computer data storage devices are also classified by their distance from the processor, or CPU. The closest storage is memory, or RAM. This is the only kind of data storage that directly accesses the CPU. Memory includes processor registers and the processor cache, but these are included on the memory module.

Memory is volatile storage, so any information that goes into memory needs to be written to the main storage device to be retained permanently. Because data flows from memory to a storage device, it's considered secondary storage.

For most personal computers, secondary storage is the main data storage device. A hard disk drive or solid state drive holds all of the data; files, photos, programs, music, and movies, that the user wants to keep. Removable, external media storage devices such as flash drives and read/writeable CDs and DVDs are also secondary storage. A computer can't function without a storage drive, however. The storage drive also holds all the information the computer needs to run.

Tertiary storage is computer data storage that uses removable media, such as a tape drive, and it uses a robot to retrieve the data. This is rarely used in personal applications.

Conclusion

In common use, the hard disk drive or solid state drive is usually referred to as the storage drive. Because memory is volatile, it's hard to think of it as a storage device. And because personal computers rarely use tertiary storage, the storage drive is the main, and frequently, only non-volatile data storage device on the computer. Learn more about the difference between hard drives and solid state drives.

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