Brainlag PlusMagnetic, optical and solid state storage, their characteristics, cloud storage, and capacity and transfer calculations.
Three technologies
- Magnetic (hard disk drives, tape): data is stored as magnetised areas on spinning platters. Large capacity and the lowest cost per gigabyte, but moving parts make it slower and easier to damage.
- Solid state (SSDs, USB sticks, SD cards): data is stored as electrical charges in flash memory. Fast, silent, light and durable, with no moving parts, but more expensive per gigabyte.
- Optical (CD, DVD, Blu-ray): data is stored as pits and lands read by a laser. Cheap to make and post, but small capacity and slow; easily scratched.
Cloud storage keeps files on remote servers reached over the internet: available anywhere and shareable, but it needs a connection and someone else holds your data.
The rest of this lesson and its 7 practice questions are in Plus.
Screen 1 of 3, free to read.
- 7 exam-style questions, marked as you go, each with a worked solution
- Anything you get wrong is saved to your flashcards