3.6 Secondary Storage

Secondary storage is a more permanent storage area than RAM that uses a device such as a hard drive.

 

1.                  Magnetic Tape is a very long strip of plastic coated with a magnetic material. Access to data is sequential. You need to fast forward or rewind to find data. This can be very slow. Cartridge and reel to reel are examples.

2.                  Magnetic disks are circular pieces of metal or plastic that are coated with magnetic material. Access to data is direct as there is a map to find the data without rewinding through all the other data.

3.                  Floppy disks are made from flexible plastic covered with magnetic material. 3½" and 5¼" are the common sizes. Most computers use  3½" high density that hold 1.44 Mb.

4.                  Hard disks are magnetic disks made of metal covered with magnetic material. It is usually in a sealed unit.

5.                  Compact disc (CD) is a plastic disk used for optical storage. There are CD_ROM (Compact Disc Read Only Memory), CD-R(Recordable) and CD-RW(erasable).

 

Write out the sentence and fill in the missing word

 

????? is external storage away from the computer’s mainboard.

????? is a very long thin strip of plastic coated with a thin layer of magnetic material.

????? is a copy, on disk or tape, of software or data that is made to guard against accidental loss.

????? is magnetic tape about 12mm wide which is placed in reels about 250mm in diameter.

????? is magnetic tape that is 6mm wide and is similar in appearance to a cassette tape.

????? is a magnetic disk made of flexible plastic and covered with magnetic material.

????? is a magnetic disk made of metal and covered with magnetic material.

????? is a hard disk that is permanently enclosed inside a sealed case for protection from the environment.

????? is a removable device in which several hard disks are packed into a single plastic case.

????? is a plastic disk used for optical storage.