Data Storage Devices

Primary storage (or main memory or internal memory), often referred to simply as memory, is the only one directly accessible to the CPU. The CPU continuously reads instructions stored there and executes them as required. Any data actively operated on is also stored there in uniform manner.

Historically, early computers used delay lines, Williams tubes, or rotating magnetic drums as primary storage. By 1954, those unreliable methods were mostly replaced by magnetic core memory, which was still rather cumbersome. Undoubtedly, a revolution was started with the invention of a transistor, that soon enabled then-unbelievable miniaturization of electronic memory via solid-state silicon chip technology.

This led to a modern random-access memory (RAM). It is small-sized, light, but quite expensive at the same time. (The particular types of RAM used for primary storage are also volatile, i.e. they lose the information when not powered).

As shown in the diagram, traditionally there are two more sub-layers of the primary storage, besides main large-capacity RAM:

• Processor registers are located inside the processor. Each register typically holds a word of data (often 32 or 64 bits). CPU instructions instruct the arithmetic and logic unit to perform various calculations or other operations on this data (or with the help of it). Registers are technically among the fastest of all forms of computer data storage.
• Processor cache is an intermediate stage between ultra-fast registers and much slower main memory. It's introduced solely to increase performance of the computer. Most actively used information in the main memory is just duplicated in the cache memory, which is faster, but of much lesser capacity. On the other hand it is much slower, but much larger than processor registers. Multi-level hierarchical cache setup is also commonly used-primary cache being smallest, fastest and located inside the processor; secondary cache being somewhat larger and slower.

Main memory is directly or indirectly connected to the CPU via a memory bus. It is actually two buses (not on the diagram): an address bus and a data bus. The CPU firstly sends a number through an address bus, a number called memory address, that indicates the desired location of data. Then it reads or writes the data itself using the data bus. Additionally, a memory management unit (MMU) is a small device between CPU and RAM recalculating the actual memory address, for example to provide an abstraction of virtual memory or other tasks.

As the RAM types used for primary storage are volatile (cleared at start up), a computer containing only such storage would not have a source to read instructions from, in order to start the computer. Hence, non-volatile primary storage containing a small startup program (BIOS) is used to bootstrap the computer, that is, to read a larger program from non-volatile secondary storage to RAM and start to execute it. A non-volatile technology used for this purpose is called ROM, for read-only memory (the terminology may be somewhat confusing as most ROM types are also capable of random access).

Many types of "ROM" are not literally read only, as updates are possible; however it is slow and memory must be erased in large portions before it can be re-written. Some embedded systems run programs directly from ROM (or similar), because such programs are rarely changed. Standard computers do not store non-rudimentary programs in ROM, rather use large capacities of secondary storage, which is non-volatile as well, and not as costly.

Secondary storage (or external memory) differs from primary storage in that it is not directly accessible by the CPU. The computer usually uses its input/output channels to access secondary storage and transfers the desired data using intermediate area in primary storage. Secondary storage does not lose the data when the device is powered down-it is non-volatile. Per unit, it is typically also an order of magnitude less expensive than primary storage. Consequently, modern computer systems typically have an order of magnitude more secondary storage than primary storage and data is kept for a longer time there.

In modern computers, hard disk drives are usually used as secondary storage. The time taken to access a given byte of information stored on a hard disk is typically a few thousandths of a second, or milliseconds. By contrast, the time taken to access a given byte of information stored in random access memory is measured in billionths of a second, or nanoseconds. This illustrates the very significant access-time difference which distinguishes solid-state memory from rotating magnetic storage devices: hard disks are typically about a million times slower than memory. Rotating optical storage devices, such as CD and DVD drives, have even longer access times. With disk drives, once the disk read/write head reaches the proper placement and the data of interest rotates under it, subsequent data on the track are very fast to access. As a result, in order to hide the initial seek time and rotational latency, data are transferred to and from disks in large contiguous blocks.

When data reside on disk, block access to hide latency offers a ray of hope in designing efficient external memory algorithms. Sequential or block access on disks is orders of magnitude faster than random access, and many sophisticated paradigms have been developed to design efficient algorithms based upon sequential and block access . Another way to reduce the I/O bottleneck is to use multiple disks in parallel in order to increase the bandwidth between primary and secondary memory.[2]

Some other examples of secondary storage technologies are: flash memory (e.g. USB flash drives or keys), floppy disks, magnetic tape, paper tape, punched cards, standalone RAM disks, and Iomega Zip drives.

The secondary storage is often formatted according to a file system format, which provides the abstraction necessary to organize data into files and directories, providing also additional information (called metadata) describing the owner of a certain file, the access time, the access permissions, and other information.

Most computer operating systems use the concept of virtual memory, allowing utilization of more primary storage capacity than is physically available in the system. As the primary memory fills up, the system moves the least-used chunks (pages) to secondary storage devices (to a swap file or page file), retrieving them later when they are needed. As more of these retrievals from slower secondary storage are necessary, the more the overall system performance is degraded.

A magnetic disk is a disk which stores information magnetically, and is read/written with a small magnetic head (e.g. a hard disk)

An optical disk is a disk which stores information optically, usually as a series of pits and peaks, and is read/writ

Magnetic Storage

a) Stores data in magnetic form & it doesn't use laser to read/write data

b) It is affected by magnetic field.

c) It has high storage capacity.

d) Data accessing is high as compared to CD's and DVD's.

e) Magnetic storage devices are ; Hard disk , Floppy

disk, Magnetic tape etc.

Optical Storage

a) Stores data optically & uses laser to read/write.

b) It is not affected by magnetic field.

c) It has less storage than hard disk.

d) Data accessing is high as compared to floppy.

e) Optical storage devices are ; CD-ROM,CD-R,

CD-RW, DVD etc.

Zone Bit Recording (ZBR) is used by disk drives to store more sectors per track on outer tracks than on inner tracks. It is also called Zone Constant Angular Velocity (Zone CAV or Z-CAV orZCAV).

On a disk consisting of roughly concentric tracks - whether realized as separate circular tracks or as a single spiral track - the physical track length (circumference) is increased as it gets farther from the center hub.

Physical layout of sectors in a zone-bit disc: As distance from the center increases, the number of sectors in a given angle increases from one (red) to two (green) to four (grey).

The inner tracks are packed as densely as the particular drive's technology allows, but with a CAV drive the data on the outer tracks are less densely packed. Using ZBR the drive divides all the tracks into a number of zones, and the inner track of each zone is packed as densely as it can, with the other tracks in that same zone recorded with the same read/write rate. This permits the drive to have more bits stored in each track outside of the innermost zone than drives not using this technique. Storing more bits per track equates to achieving a higher total data capacity on the same disk area.[1]

On a hard disk using ZBR, the data on the tracks in the outer most zone will have the highest data transfer rate. Since both hard disks and floppy disks typically number their tracks beginning at the outer edge and continuing inward, and since operating systems typically fill the lowest-numbered tracks first, this is where the operating system typically stores its own files during its initial installation onto an empty drive. Testing disk drives when they are new or empty after defragmenting them with some benchmarking applications will often show their highest performance. After some time, when more data is stored in the inner tracks, the average data transfer rate will drop, because the transfer rate in the inner zones is slower; often making people think their disk drive is slowing down over time.[1] Some other ZBR drives, such as the 800 kilobyte 3.5" floppy drives in the Apple IIGS and older Macintosh computers, don't change the data rate but rather spin the medium faster when reading or writing outer tracks, thus approximating constant linear velocity drives.