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1.3 Storage - Coggle Diagram
Secondary storage
Non-volatile, long-term storage.
There are many types of secondary storage that are different and suit different scenarios. E.g. a USB stick is relatively small in capacity, but fast and portable, making it easy for transfer between different devices.
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Types of storage
Optical
Uses a laser to scan the surface of a disc divided into tracks with lands and pits. When the beam is pointed, lands (binary 1) reflect the light back and pits (binary 0) scatter the beam.
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Solid state
Non-volatile RAM. Have fast access times. They have no moving parts, so are durable and portable.
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Magnetic
Involves using magnetic fields with magnetised and demagnetised sections to represent bits of data (magnetised = binary 1 and demagnetised = binary 0). In a hard disk drive, a read-write head on the disk will interpret the data by noting which sections are magnetised or demagnetised.
They are fairly cheap, high in capacity and durable. However, they can be easily damaged through being dropped and are affected by magnetic interference.
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