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INTRODUCTION This chapter established the different ways to storing data, and gives us an idea of which it’s better for our situation. This chapter also established the categorizing of the storage devices that are two main categorizes: the magnetic storage and the optical storage, and also it’s included another category that is the solid-state devices.
The first category divides into diskette drives, hard disks drives, high capacity floppy disk drives and tape drives, they functions are explained in the chapter, these functions goes from give you the opportunity to store 1,474,560 bytes to the possibility to have multipliable disks in one, that is the case of the hard disk. In the second category you can found the CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-Rewritable, PhotoCD, and other devices that allow you to create you own DVDs with audio, music, video, etc or just to store whatever you want with more capacity.
You also are going to see the solid-state devices that classified in: fast memory, smart cards and solid-state disks. Another important thing that you are going to see in this chapter is about the speed in these devices that is a major factor because measure the performance of these computer’s disk drives operations. So what are you waiting for? Check it now! INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTERS Lesson 6A: “TYPES OF STORAGE DATA” Assignment # 6 Review Questions Pag. 246 1)List the four types of magnetic storage media commonly used with PCs. •Diskette drives •Hard disk drives High-capacity floppy disk drives •Tape drives 2)List seven types of optical storage devices that can be used with PCs •CD-ROM •DVD-ROM •CD-Recordable •CD-Rewritable (CD-RW) •PhotoCD •DVD-Recordable (DVD-R) •DVD-RAM 3)Name the three types of solid-state storage devices •Flash memory •Smart Cards •Solid-State disks 4)Why a hard disk is called a random access storage device? – Because the hard disk’s high rotational speed allows more data to be recorded on the disk’s surface, this is because a faster-spinning disk can use smaller magnetic charges to make current flow through the read/write head. )Describe how a magnetic disk drive’s read/write head can pass data to and from the surface of a disk. – The read/write head passes over the disk or tape while no current is flowing thorough the electromagnet, the head possesses no charge, but the storage medium is covered with magnetic fields, which represent bits of data. The storage medium charges the magnet in the head, which causes a small current to flow through the head in one direction or the order, depending on the field’s polarity. 6)What is the purpose of formatting a magnetic disk? To prepare to used the disk, because you deleted all the existing files that are in the disk. 7)What is the storage capacity of a standard floppy disk? – 1,474,560 bytes 8)Although magnetic tape can store a large quantity of data, it has one drawback when compared to other storage media such as hard disks. Describe that drawback. – The locate data much more slowly that the other device , this because the tape is a long strip of magnetic material, the tape drive has to write data one byte by byte, and to find a piece of data, the drive must scan through all the sequence, so this make the process very slow. )Describe the function of lands and pits on the surface of a compact disc – The land reflects the laser light into the sensor and a pit scatters the light. 10)How does a solid-state disk store data – By using the memory chip: synchronous dynamic RAM (SDRAM) that is faster than the standard RAM. These chips may be a free-standing unit that connects to a server computer or a card that plugs into one of the server’s expansion slots. INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTERS Lesson 6B: “MEASURING AND IMPROVING DRIVE PERFORMANCE” Assignment # 6 Review Questions Pag. 59 1)What is the primary purpose of file compression utilities such as WinZip? – Archiving unneeded data files (compressing one or more files to reduce their storage requirements) 2)What is another name for the IEEE 1394 interface? -. FireWire 3)What is data transfer rate? – The amount of time it takes for one device to send data to another device. 4)What is the most effective way to measure the average access time of a hard disk? – To check the manufacturer’s specifications. 5)What is the average access time for a diskette drive? -.
It’s about one half the maximum or 100 milliseconds. 6)What are average access times like for hard disks? – About four or five milliseconds. 7)List three tasks you can perform that can improve the performance of a computer’s hard disk. •Cleaning up unneeded files •Scanning a disk for errors •Defragmenting a disk 8)How can fragmentation harm a system’s performance? – By become pieces of files scattered around on the disk. The file is stored in noncontiguous sectors on the disk’s surface. 9)Why is there confusion about the EIDE and SCSI drive-interface standards? Because the competing developers have introduced many variations of and names for these technologies. 10)How are the SCSI, USB and FireWire interfaces similar? -. That the three allows users to connect many peripherals at the same time. When you computer need extra storage, you can simply purchase additional hard drives as you need them and connect them to your computer by using whatever of these three option connections. CONCLUSION As we saw, these devices to store data and the speed of these involves an important part of our decision when we want to buy a new computer or upgrading our current system.
We also can use this information to select the devices that latter we can connect to our computer, but we have to be aware that these devices are compatible with our computer if we want to be possible to use them. We saw also the different options that we can choose to have more optimistic disk performance, like cleaning up unneeded files, or used the file compression, or scanning a disk for errors, or even Defragmenting a disk. So you don’t have excuse to not use these devices, so do it now! BIBLIOGRAPHY Norton, Peter “INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTERS” Sixth Edition 2006