Unit 1.3 Storage Lesson 1: Storage Devices

Big Picture What do you store on your phones? On your computers? Tablets? Why do we need storage devices? What could computers do without storage devices?

Learning Objectives Identify the need for and purpose of secondary storage Identify common types of storage Match storage devices to their type of storage Explain the characteristics of common types of storage

Engagement Activity In pairs, list all the different storage devices that you use (or have used). Extensions: What did you use them for? What type of data did you storage?

Key Words Secondary storage Optical Magnetic Solid State Durability Reliability Portability Capacity Speed

What is Secondary Storage? Long term storage of data, files, software, OS. Why do we need to store these things? To access it again later To use software To interact with the computer What would happen without secondary storage? Software would need to be installed each time we use it You couldn’t save any files, data, images, videos etc.

Types of Storage Optical Magnetic Solid State

Optical A laser light creates marks in a pattern on the disk A laser light detects where the marks are and translates this into a readable format

Magnetic Read/write move across the medium and change how magnetised that part of the medium is E.g. one level of magnetism will be a 1, a second will be a 0

Solid State This is made of microchips (switches) The state of the switches determine if a 1, or 0 is stored

Activity 1 In pairs, complete the table, identifying if each storage device is magnetic, optical or solid state. Extension – discuss the questions at the bottom of the worksheet

Activity 1 - Answer Device Magnetic Optical Solid state Hard Disk Drive    Solid State Drive Blu ray DVD ROM SD Card USB Memory Stick CD ROM Tape Drives

Characteristics of Storage Devices What do we mean by “characteristics”? A characteristic is a feature, attribute or distinguishing trait

Characteristics of Storage Devices Capacity how much data can it store? Speed how fast can it access the data? Portability how easy is it to move it from one place to another Durability how well does it last e.g. if it is dropped Reliability how consistently does it perform Cost how much does it cost per KB, MB or GB?

Characteristics of Storage Devices Type of device Capacity Speed Portability Durability Reliability Cost Optical 3 2 Magnetic 1 Solid State Based on your research and knowledge – is 1 best or 3 best? The table has ‘1’ as being the best – ‘3’ is least good. Disclaimer: these rankings are ‘in general’, there are likely to be many individual devices that do not quite fit this pattern.

Activity 2 Complete the mind map with: The three types of storage A definition of each type of storage A list of example devices The characteristics for that type of device

Plenary Questions What is secondary storage? Why do we need secondary storage? What are the 3 types of storage? What type of storage is a USB memory stick? What type of storage is a CDROM? What type of storage is a HDD? What type of storage is the fastest to read data from? What type of storage is the most expensive per GB? What type of storage is the most reliable? What type of storage is the least durable?

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