Secondary Storage

Question 1

What is the computer’s primary storage ?

Answer 1

The ram

Question 2

What is the secondary storage?

Answer 2

storage which retains data

Question 3

What are the 3 types I have to know about?

Answer 3

• hard drive
• solid state drive
• optical disk

Question 4

is secondary storage volatile or not?

Answer 4

non-volatile

Question 5

What is a hard drive?

Answer 5

a few rotating platters coated with magnetic material. The disk is divided into circular tracks with each track having sectors. When spinning the drive head moves across sectors and tracks.

Question 6

How does the hard drive compare to the 2 other types of secondary storage?

Answer 6

• cheaper than SSD
• huge capacity for the price
• can be partitioned, so dual booting is possible
• slower to read and write than SSD
• not very portable due to moving parts
• loud
• can undergo fragmentation

Question 7

What is an SSD?

Answer 7

Consists of an array of chips arranged onto a board. These chips are flash memory calls with a controller managing blocks and pages of memory. Data is stored in pages, grouped into blocks. Data can be written to a page, only if the block is free.

Question 8

How does an SSD compare to other 2 secondary storage devices?

Answer 8

• low capacity
• faster access than HDD
• consumes less power than HDD
• less susceptible to damage
• more silent than HDD
• more portable

Question 9

What are the 3 formats of an optical disk?

Answer 9

• read only (CD-ROM) - holds about 700mb
• recordable (CD-R) - dry coating which becomes less reflective when laser is used to write data
• rewriteable (C - RW) - uses laser and magnet to heat spots and set their states

Question 10

How does an optical disk work?

Answer 10

A high powered laser is used to burn (change chemical properties of sections of the surface), making is less reflective. When read the laser is reflected and the the amount reflection caused by ridges and puts scatters the laser which is received by a detector. The amount of reflected laser is interpreted as data.

Question 11

What is the capacity of a blu ray disk?

Answer 11

25-50 gb , this is because these use a laser of a shorter wavelength so more ridges and puts can fit

Question 12

Features of an optical disk?

Answer 12

cheap to produce
easy to transport
can be easily scratched or/and corrupted or damaged
lowest data read/write speed

Question 13

Can optical disks be bought in double layered format?

Answer 13

yes, for DVD and bluray which doubles their capacity

Question 14

What is an SSD an example of ? other examples

Answer 14

a flash memory

• USB
• SD Card
• MP3
• Micro SD

Question 15

What kind of a secondary storage does a phone use?

Answer 15

SSD