A data storage device is a device for recording (storing) information (data). Recording Recording is a process of capturing data or translating information to a format stored on a storage medium often referred to as a record can be done using virtually any form of energy In physics, energy is a quantity that can be assigned to any particle, object, or system of objects as a consequence of its physical state. Different forms of energy include kinetic, potential, thermal, gravitational, sound, elastic and electromagnetic energy. The forms of energy are often named after a related force. German physicist Hermann von, spanning from manual muscle power in handwriting Penmanship or handwriting is the art of writing with the hand and a writing instrument. Styles of handwriting are also called hands or scripts, to acoustic vibrations in phonographic The phonograph, record player, or gramophone was the most common device for playing sound recordings from the late 1870s until the late 1980s recording, to electromagnetic energy modulating magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. Most audio, video and computer data storage is this type. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape and optical discs In computing and optical recording, an optical disc is a flat, usually circular disc which encode binary data in the form of pits and lands (binary value of 1 or on, due to a reflection when read) on a special material (often aluminium[citation needed]) on one of its flat surfaces. The encoding material sits atop a thicker substrate (usually.

A storage device may hold information, process information, or both. A device that only holds information is a recording medium In communication, media are the storage and transmission channels or tools used to store and deliver information or data. It is often referred to as synonymous with mass media or news media, but may refer to a single medium used to communicate any data for any purpose. Devices that process information (data storage equipment) may either access a separate portable (removable) recording medium or a permanent component to store and retrieve information.

Electronic data storage is storage which requires electrical power to store and retrieve that data. Most storage devices that do not require vision Visual perception is the ability to interpret information and surroundings from visible light reaching the eye. The resulting perception is also known as eyesight, sight, or vision . The various physiological components involved in vision are referred to collectively as the visual system, and are the focus of much research in psychology, cognitive and a brain to read data fall into this category. Electromagnetic data may be stored in either an analog An Analog or analogue signal is any continuous signal for which the time varying feature of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity, i.e., analogous to another time varying signal. It differs from a digital signal in terms of small fluctuations in the signal which are meaningful. Analog is usually thought of in an or digital A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital (or analog) systems use a continuous range of values to represent information. Although digital representations are discrete, the information represented can be either discrete, such as numbers, letters or icons, or continuous, such as sounds, images, and format on a variety of media. This type of data is considered to be electronically encoded In telecommunication, a machine-readable medium is a medium capable of storing data in a machine-readable format that can be accessed by an automated sensing device and capable of being turned into (practically in every case) some form of binary data, whether or not it is electronically stored in a semiconductor A semiconductor is a material that has an electrical conductivity due to flowing electrons which is intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means roughly in the range 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter. Devices made from semiconductor materials are the foundation of modern electronics, including radio, device Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, refers to computer components, devices, and recording media that retain digital data used for computing for some interval of time. Computer data storage provides one of the core functions of the modern computer, that of information retention. It is one of the fundamental components of all, for it is certain that a semiconductor device was used to record it on its medium. Most electronically processed data storage media (including some forms of computer data storage Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, refers to computer components, devices, and recording media that retain digital data used for computing for some interval of time. Computer data storage provides one of the core functions of the modern computer, that of information retention. It is one of the fundamental components of all) are considered permanent (non-volatile) storage, that is, the data will remain stored when power is removed from the device. In contrast, most electronically stored information within most types of semiconductor (computer chips) microcircuits In electronics, an integrated circuit is a miniaturized electronic circuit (consisting mainly of semiconductor devices, as well as passive components) that has been manufactured in the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material. Integrated circuits are used in almost all electronic equipment in use today and have revolutionized the are volatile memory Volatile memory, also known as volatile storage, is computer memory that requires power to maintain the stored information, unlike non-volatile memory which does not require a maintained power supply. It has been less popularly known as temporary memory, for it vanishes if power is removed.

With the exception of barcodes A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data, which shows certain data on certain products. Originally, barcodes represented data in the widths and the spacings of parallel lines, and may be referred to as linear or 1D (1 dimensional) barcodes or symbologies. They also come in patterns of squares, dots, hexagons and other and OCR Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping system in an office, or to publish the text on a data, electronic data storage is easier to revise and may be more cost effective than alternative methods due to smaller physical space requirements and the ease of replacing (rewriting) data on the same medium. However, the durability of methods such as printed data is still superior to that of most electronic storage media. The durability limitations may be overcome with the ease of duplicating (backing-up In information technology, a backup or the process of backing up refers to making copies of data so that these additional copies may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb is back up in two words, whereas the noun is backup) electronic data.

Terminology

Devices that are not used exclusively for recording (e.g. hands A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered body part located at the end of an arm or forelimb of primates and some[which?] other vertebrates, mouths The mouth is the first portion of the alimentary canal that receives food and begins digestion by mechanically breaking up the solid food particles into smaller pieces and mixing them with saliva. The oral mucosa is the mucous membrane epithelium lining the inside of the mouth, musical instruments A musical instrument is constructed or used for the purpose of making the sounds of music. In principle, anything that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the beginnings of human culture. The academic study of musical instruments is called organology) and devices that are intermediate in the storing/retrieving process (e.g. eyes Eyes are organs that detect light, and convert it to electro-chemical impulses in neurons. The simplest photoreceptors connect light to movement . In higher organisms complex neural pathways exist that connect the eye, via the optic nerve to the visual cortex and other areas of the brain. Complex optical systems with resolving power have come in, ears The ear is the organ that detects sound. The vertebrate ear shows a common biology from fish to humans, with variations in structure according to order and species. It not only acts as a receiver for sound, but also plays a major role in the sense of balance and body position. The ear is part of the auditory system, cameras A camera is a device that records/stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism for projecting images. The modern camera evolved from the camera obscura, scanners In computing, a scanner is a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting, or an object, and converts it to a digital image. Common examples found in offices are variations of the desktop scanner where the document is placed on a glass window for scanning. Hand-held scanners, where the device is moved by hand, have evolved from, microphones A microphone (colloquially called a mic or mike is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1876, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, tape recorders, karaoke systems, hearing aids,, speakers A loudspeaker is an electroacoustic transducer that converts an electrical signal into sound. The speaker moves in accordance with the variations of an electrical signal and causes sound waves to propagate through a medium such as air or water, monitors, projectors) are not usually considered storage devices. Devices that are exclusively for recording (e.g. printers In computing, a printer is a peripheral which produces a hard copy of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as local peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable or, in most newer printers, a USB cable to a computer which serves as a document), exclusively for reading (e.g. barcode readers A barcode reader is an electronic device for reading printed barcodes. Like a flatbed scanner, it consists of a light source, a lens and a light sensor translating optical impulses into electrical ones. Additionally, nearly all barcode readers contain decoder circuitry analyzing the barcode's image data provided by the sensor and sending the), or devices that process only one form of information (e.g. phonographs The phonograph, record player, or gramophone was the most common device for playing sound recordings from the late 1870s until the late 1980s) may or may not be considered storage devices. In computing Computing, also known as computer science, is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer technology, computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology. Computer science is the study and the science of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation these are known as input An input device is any peripheral used to provide data and control signals to an information processing system (such as a computer). Input and output devices make up the hardware interface between a computer as a scanner or 6DOF controller/output An output device is any piece of computer hardware equipment used to communicate the results of data processing carried out by an information processing system to the outside world devices.

An organic brain The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate, and most invertebrate, animals. Some primitive animals such as jellyfish and starfish have a decentralized nervous system without a brain, while sponges lack any nervous system at all. In vertebrates, the brain is located in the head, protected by the skull and close to the primary may or may not be considered a data storage device.^[2]

All information is data The term data refers to groups of information that represent the qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which information and. However, not all data is information Information, in its most restricted technical sense, is an ordered sequence of symbols. As a concept, however, information has many meanings. Moreover, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation.

Many data storage devices are also media players. Any device that can store and playback multimedia Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which only use traditional forms of printed or hand-produced material. Multimedia includes a combination of text, audio, may also be considered a media player such as in the case with the HDD media player An HDD media player is a device that plays videos, music and photos from a hard drive that the user installs themselves . They play formats such as DivX, MP1,2,4, AVI, MP3, JPEG. Designated hard drives are used to play saved or streaming media Streaming media are multimedia that are constantly received by, and normally presented to, an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider . The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather than to the medium itself. The distinction is usually applied to media that are distributed over telecommunications networks, as most on home entertainment systems A Home Theater PC or media PC is a convergence device that combines the functions of a personal computer and a media center software which feature video and music playback, and usually but not always also digital video recorder functionality. It usually has a 10-foot user interface and is connected to a television or a television-sized computer.

Trends

International Data Corporation International Data Corporation is a market research and analysis firm specializing in information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology. IDC is a subsidiary of International Data Group. IDC is headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts and claims to have over 1000 analysts in 50 countries estimated that the total amount of digital data was 281 billion gigabytes The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units (SI), therefore 1 gigabyte is 1000000000bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte is GB or Gbyte, but not Gb (lower case b) which is typically used for the gigabit in 2007, and had for the first time exceeded the amount of storage.^[3]

Data storage equipment

Any input/output In computing, input/output, or I/O, refers to the communication between an information processing system , and the outside world possibly a human, or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it. The term can also be used as part of an action; to & equipment may be considered data storage equipment if it writes to and reads from a data storage medium. Data storage equipment uses either:

• portable methods (easily replaced),
• semi-portable methods requiring mechanical disassembly tools and/or opening a chassis A chassis (pronounced /ˈʃæsi, ˈtʃæsi/) consists of an internal framework that supports a man-made object. It is analogous to an animal's skeleton. An example of a chassis is the under part of a motor vehicle, consisting of the frame (on which the body is mounted) with the wheels and machinery, or
• inseparable methods meaning loss of memory if disconnected from the unit.

The following are examples of those methods:

Portable methods

• Hand crafting Arts and crafts comprise a whole host of activities and hobbies that are related to making things with one's hands and skill. These can be sub-divided into handicrafts or "traditional crafts" and "the rest". Some crafts have been practised for centuries, while others are modern inventions, or popularisations of crafts which
• Flat surface
  • Printmaking Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable of producing multiples of the same piece, which is
  • Photographic Photography is the process, activity and art of creating still or moving pictures by recording radiation on a radiation-sensitive medium, such as a photographic film, or an electronic sensor. Light patterns reflected or emitted from objects activate a sensitive chemical or electronic sensor during a timed exposure, usually through a photographic
• Fabrication
  • Automated Automation is the use of control systems and information technologies reducing the need for human intervention. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly reduces the need for assembly Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to make things for use or sale. Also it can be used for selling things. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale. Such
  • Textile
  • Molding
  • Solid freeform fabrication
• Cylindrical accessing
• Card reader/drive
• Tape drive
  • Mono reel or reel-to-reel
  • Compact Cassette player/recorder
• Disk accessing
  • Disk drive
  • Disk enclosure
• Cartridge accessing/connecting (tape/disk/circuitry)
• Peripheral networking
• Flash memory devices

Semi-portable methods

• Hard disk drive
• Circuitry with non-volatile RAM

Inseparable methods

• Circuitry with volatile RAM
• Neurons^[4]

Recording medium

A recording medium is a physical material that holds data expressed in any of the existing recording formats. With electronic media, the data and the recording medium is sometimes referred to as "software" despite the more common use of the word to describe computer software. With (traditional art) static media, art materials such as crayons may be considered both equipment and medium as the wax, charcoal or chalk material from the equipment becomes part of the surface of the medium.

Some recording media may be temporary either by design or by nature. Volatile organic compounds may be used to preserve the environment or to purposely make data expire over time. Data such as smoke signals or skywriting are temporary by nature. Depending on the volatility, a gas (e.g. atmosphere, smoke) or a liquid surface such as a lake would be considered a temporary recording medium if at all.

Ancient and timeless examples

• Optical
  • Any object visible to the eye, used to mark a location such as a, stone, flag or skull.
  • Any crafting material used to form shapes such as clay, wood, metal, glass, wax or quipu.
  • Any branding surface that would scar under intense heat (chiefly for livestock or humans).
  • Any marking substance such as paint, ink or chalk.
  • Any surface that would hold a marking substance such as, papyrus, paper, skin.
• Chemical
  • RNA
  • DNA
  • Pheromone

Modern examples by energy used

• Chemical
  • Dipstick
• Thermodynamic
  • Thermometer
• Photochemical
  • Photographic film
• Mechanical
  • Pins and holes
    • Punched card
    • Paper tape
      • Music roll
    • Music box cylinder or disk
  • Grooves (See also Audio Data)
    • Phonograph cylinder
    • Gramophone record
    • DictaBelt (groove on plastic belt)
    • Capacitance Electronic Disc
• Magnetic storage
  • Wire recording (stainless steel wire)
  • Magnetic tape
  • Drum memory (magnetic drum)
  • Floppy disk
• Optical storage
  • Photo paper
  • X-ray
  • Microform
  • Hologram
  • Projected transparency
  • Optical disc
  • Magneto-optical disc
  • Holographic data storage
  • 3D optical data storage
• Electrical
  • Semiconductor used in volatile RAM microchips
  • Floating-gate transistor used in non-volatile memory cards

Modern examples by shape

A typical way to classify data storage media is to consider its shape and type of movement (or non-movement) relative to the read/write device(s) of the storage apparatus as listed:

• Paper card storage
  • Punched card (mechanical)
• Cams and tracers (pipe organ combination-action memory memorizing stop selections)
• Tape storage (long, thin, flexible, linearly moving bands)
  • Paper tape (mechanical)
  • Magnetic tape (a tape passing one or more read/write/erase heads)
• Disk storage (flat, round, rotating object)
  • Gramophone record (used for distributing some 1980s home computer programs) (mechanical)
  • Floppy disk, ZIP disk (removable) (magnetic)
  • Holographic
  • Optical disc such as CD, DVD, Blu-ray Disc
  • Minidisc
  • Hard disk drive (magnetic)
• Magnetic bubble memory
• Flash memory/memory card (solid state semiconductor memory)
  • xD-Picture Card
  • MultiMediaCard
  • USB flash drive (also known as a "thumb drive" or "keydrive")
  • SmartMedia
  • CompactFlash I and II
  • Secure Digital
  • Sony Memory Stick (Std/Duo/PRO/MagicGate versions)
  • Solid-state drive

Bekenstein (2003) foresees that miniaturization might lead to the invention of devices that store bits on a single atom.^[5]

Weight and volume

Especially for carrying around data, the weight and volume per MB are relevant. They are quite large for written and printed paper compared with modern electronic media. On the other hand, written and printer paper do not require (the weight and volume of) reading equipment, and handwritten edits only require simple writing equipment, such as a pen.

With mobile data connections the data need not be carried around to have them available.

See also

• Archival science
• Blank media tax
• Computer data storage
• Content format
• Data transmission
• Semiconductor memory
• Digital Preservation
• Format war
• Flip-flop (electronics)
• IOPS
• Library
• Medium format (film)
• Memristor
• Nanodot
• Nonlinear medium (random access)
• Recording formats
• Telecommunication

References

1. ^ Gilbert, Walter (Feb 1986). "The RNA World". Nature 319: 618. doi:10.1038/319618a0.
2. ^ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 1950, 1953 pp:150-152, ISBN 0345342968
3. ^ Gantz, John F. et al. (2008). "The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe". International Data Corporation via EMC. http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/diverse-exploding-digital-universe.pdf. Retrieved 2009-04-09.
4. ^ Aaron P. Nelson and Susan Gilbert, Harvard Medical School Guide to Achieving Optimal Memory, Mar 2005, page 66
5. ^ Bekenstein, Jacob D. (2003, August). Information in the holographic universe. Scientific American.

Further reading

• Bennett, John C. (1997). 'JISC/NPO Studies on the Preservation of Electronic Materials: A Framework of Data Types and Formats, and Issues Affecting the Long Term Preservation of Digital Material. British Library Research and Innovation Report 50. http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/papers/bl/jisc-npo50/bennet.html.

External links

• Historical Notes about the Cost of Hard Drive Storage Space
• Macroscopic 10-Terabit–per–Square-Inch Arrays from Block Copolymers with Lateral Order - Science magazine article about perspective usage of sapphire in digital storage media technology

Categories: Communication | Data management | Film and video technology | Sound production technology | Computer storage | Media technology | Storage media | Art materials | Recording | Library and information science

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• Device Driver
• Device Driver
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• Device: Dictionary
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