1. Unit 1.3 Storage Lesson 1: Storage Devices

2. 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?

3. 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

4. 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?

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

6. 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.

7. Types of Storage
Optical
Magnetic
Solid State

8. 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

9. 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

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

11. 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

12. 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

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

14. 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?

15. 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.

16. 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

17. 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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