Storage Concepts

Introduction on Primary and

Secondary Storage Devices
•The purpose of the storage unit of the computer
is to store the data entered before processing and
also to store the results after processing
•Physical devices used to store programs or data
on a temporary or permanent basis for use in a
computer.
•Memory-Data stored in the form of chips.
Storage-Data stored in tapes or disks.
 STORAGE UNIT
• Primary Storage Devices
• Secondary Storage Devices
 Primary Storage Devices
or
RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY

• The term random access means that any word in

the memory may be accessed, without having to
go through all the other words to get to it.
• It can read and write.
• Memory consist of integrated- circuit either on
motherboard or small circuit board attached to
motherboard.
• Memory enhance easily by adding memory chip.
• It is a volatile form of memory.
 RAM
DYANAMIC RAM(DRAM) STATIC RAM(SRAM)

• It only holds its data if it is continuously • It is also a volatile storage

accessed by a refresh circuit. devices.
• Many hundreds of times each second, • These chips are more
this circuitry reads and then re-writes complicated and take up more
the contents of each memory cell. space.
• It is slower and more complicated than • It is used in specialized
SRAM. applications.
• It is cheap and take up much less space, • It is fast and access time 80 nano
typically ¼ the silicon area or SRAM or -second to read from or write into
less. any location.
• It is used in primary storage. • It is expensive.
• It takes 120 to 200 nano-second to read
from or write into any location.
 ROM
• ROM ( READ ONLY MEMORY )
• ROM is “built-in “computer memory containing data that
normally can only be read, not written to.
• ROM Memory is pre-set memory. ROM is one in which
information are stored permanently.
• The access time for memory is very fast.
• ROM is very expensive to design and manufacturer.
• ROM is a Non-volatile memory.
• It has continuous source of power and do not need
periodically refreshed.
 TYPES OF ROM
• PROM
• EPROM
• EEPROM
• EAROM
 PROM
•  (Programmable Read Only Memory) PROM
are programmed to record information using a
facility known as a PROM – programmer. The
recorded information cannot be changed. It is
also non-volatile storage. E.g video games,
mobile phones etc.
 EPROM
• EPROM (Erasable Programmable Read Only
Memory)
• It was developed to allow programmers to
reprogram permanent read only chips.
• It is erased and reprogrammed by exposing
the inside of the chip to Ultra Violet Light.
• It were used in the old IBM PCs and XTs for
storing the BIOS information.
 EAROM
• Electrically Alterable ROM Memory (EAROM)
• Memory can be programmed and erased by electrical signals.
• It does not require exposure to ultraviolet light to erase its
contents.
• It provide easy means to load and store temporary or
permanent information in a form of ROM memory.
• This memory can be retained for many years without any
power supplied.
• It is a backup to RAM memory.
• A special form of EEPROM is flash memory
 EEPROM
• EEPROM ( Electrically Erasable memory)
• It allow the erasure of ROM chips on the fly.
• It send a series of special electrical signals
through the chip erases EEPROM chips.
• EEPROM chip is often referred to as the CMOS
BIOS chip in computer.
• Information erased by electric pulses like Flash
memory.
CMOS Memory = Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor memory
What are the secondary Storage Devices?

• The secondary memory is used to store the

data permanently in the computer. The
secondary storage devices are usually as
follows: hard disk drives – this is the most
common type of storage device that is used in
almost all the computer systems. The other
ones include the floppy disk drives, the CD
ROM, and the DVD ROM. The flash memory,
the USB data card etc.
 Types of Secondary storage devices 

• Hard disks.
• Floppy disks.
• CD ROMs.
• DVDs.
• Pen drives.
• Blue Ray Disks.
 Magnetic Tapes
• Magnetic tapes Magnetic tape has been used for data storage for over 
50 years. When storing large amounts of data, tape can 
be substantially less expensive than disk or other data 
storage options. 
This medium consisting of a thin tape with a coating of a 
fine magnetic material, used for recording analogue or  digital data. 
A device that stores computer data on magnetic tape is a 
tape drive. The capacity of tape media are generally on 
the same order as hard disk drives (The largest being 
about 5 Terabytes in 2011). 
Magnetic Tapes Generally transfer data a bit slower than 
hard drives, however magnetic tapes are cheaper and 
are more durable  
 Drawbacks Of Magnetic Tapes
•  Writing and retrieving data is slow.
It uses serial access for reading and writing.
• Application
Magnetic tapes are used for application which 
requires extremely large storage capacity where speed
 of access is not an issue. 
It is commonly used for backups of file servers 
for computer networks, in a variety of batch 
processing applications such as reading of bank 
cheques, payroll processing and general stock  control.
 Floppy Disk
• Floppy Disks were an were a ubiquitous form of data 
storage between 1980's and early 2000's, 
Floppy disks comes in 3 sizes: 8-inches, 5.5-inches and  3.5
inches.  The capacities of Floppy disks vary between 1-2.50 
Megabytes and these devices were very slow, reading 
data at rates of bytes and kbytes/second. However, 
most are very small and portable.
• Application Any use where small files such as word processing, 
small spreadsheets and databases need to be moved 
from one computer to another.
Useful to backup small data files.
 Floppy Disk
• A soft magnetic disk. It is called floppy because it
flops if you wave it (at least, the 5-inch variety
does). Unlike most hard disks, floppy disks (often
called floppies or diskettes) are portable, because
you can remove them from a disk drive. Disk drives
for floppy disks are called floppy drives. Floppy disks
are slower to access than hard disks and have
less storage capacity, but they are much less
expensive. And most importantly, they are portable.
 Types of Floppies
• Floppies come in three basic sizes:
• 8-inch:The first floppy disk design, invented by IBM in the late 1960s and
used in the early 1970s as first a read-only format and then as a read-write
format. The typical desktop/laptop computer does not use the 8-inch floppy
disk.
• 5-inch: The common size for PCs made before 1987 and the predecessor to
the 8-inch floppy disk. This type of floppy is generally capable
of storing between 100K and 1.2MB (megabytes) of data. The most common
sizes are 360K and 1.2MB.
• 3-inch: Floppy is something of a misnomer for these disks, as they are
encased in a rigid envelope. Despite their small size, microfloppies have a
larger storage capacity than their cousins -- from 400K to 1.4MB of data. The
most common sizes for PCs are 720K (double-density) and 1.44MB (high-
density Macintoshes support disks of 400K, 800K, and 1.2MB.
Floppies
 Fixed hard discs
• A hard disk drive is the device used to store large 
amounts of digital information in computers. 
Hard disk drives are used to store operating 
systems, software, video, music and working data. 
These are suitable for any application which 
requires very fast access to data for both reading 
and writing to.
Almost all computers used a fixed hard disc. Used 
for online and real time processes requiring direct  access. 
Used in file servers for computer networks to store 
large amount of data.
 Fixed Hard Disk
• It is a non-volatile, random access digital magnetic 
data storage device.
 A hard drive is made up of platters which stored 
the data, and read/write heads to transfer data. 
A Hard Drive is generally the fastest of the 
secondary storage devices, and has the largest data 
storage capacity, approximately the same as  Magnetic Tapes.
 Hard drives however, are not very portable and 
are primarily used internally in a computer system. 
Some persons use hard drives externally as a form 
of storage and as a substitute for portable storage, 
hard drives used for these purposes are called  external hard drives
 Working of Hard Disk
• The smallest unit that can be accessed on a disk. When a disk undergoes a low-
level format, it is divided into tracks and sectors. The tracks are concentric circles
around the disk and the sectors are segments within each circle. For example, a
formatted disk might have 40 tracks, with each track divided into 10 sectors. The
operating system and disk drive keep tabs on where information is stored on the
disk by noting its track and sector number. Modern hard disk drives use a
technique called zoned-bit recording in which tracks on the outside of the disk
contain more sectors than those on the inside.
• A sector that cannot be used due to a physical flaw on the disk is called a bad
sector.
• The concept of cylinders is important, since cross-platter information in the same
cylinder can be accessed without having to move the heads. The sector is a disk’s
smallest accessible unit. Drives use a technique called zoned-bit recording in
which tracks on the outside of the disk contain more sectors than those on the
inside.
Hard Disk
 Portable hard discs
• Portable hard discs are good fun because you 
can carry data about all over the place and 
transfer information, programs, pictures, etc 
between computers.
This hardware can be connected with laptop, 
notebook and pc using USB port.
Plug and play enable the device more flexible to 
the user. We can carry any where else due to its smaller 
size, price and capacity.
Advantages of Portable Hard Discs.
• Advantages:
• Greatly improved data cargo carrying capacity (relative to the 1.44
Mb floppy disc).
• You don't need to worry about the other person having the same
type of special cartridge drive as yourself.
• Disadvantages:
– • Hard drives have to be handled quite carefully, and when being
transported should be wrapped in something soft and put in a padded
bag.
– • More expensive than other forms of removable media.
– Application :- Portable disc discs are used to store very large files which
need transporting from one computer to another and price is not an issue.
 Optical Backing Storage Media
• Optical backing storage media such as CDs and
DVDs Optical disk is an electronic data storage
medium from which data is read and written to by
using a low-powered laser beam. It is flat, circular,
plastic or glass disk on which data is stored in the
form of light and dark pits. There are three basic
types of optical disks: Read-only optical disks, Write
once read many Optical disks and Rewritable
Optical disks. Two main types of optical disks are:
CD and DVD
 CD’s and DVD’s
• CDs tend to be used for large files (but smaller than 1Gb) which are
too big for a floppy disc to hold such as music and general animation.
• CD ROM/DVD ROM Applications which require the prevention of
deletion of data, accidental or otherwise.
• CD R/DVD R Applications which require a single ‘burning’ of data, e.g.
CDs - recording of music downloads from the Internet, recording of
music from MP3 format, recording of data for archiving or backup
purposes. DVDs – recording of film movies and television programs.
• CD RW/DVD RW Applications which require the updating of
information and ability to record over old data. Not suitable for music
recording but is very useful for keeping generations of files. DVDs
have between five and ten times the capacity of CDs.
 DVD
• DVD is an abbreviation of Digital Versatile Disc, and is
an optical disc storage media format that can be used
for data storage. The DVD supports disks with capacities
of 4.7 GB to 17 GB and access rates of 600 KBps to 1.3
MBps. A standard DVD disc store up to 4.7 GB of data.
There are two types of DVD's: DVD-ROM and DVD-RW.
DVD-ROM are stands for DVD-Read Only Memory and
they function the same way Read Only Memory Does.
DVD-RW Stards for DVD-Rewritable, these disks can be
erased and rewritten at any time.
 Pen Drive
• Flash Drive – Pen drive A flash drive is a small external
storage device, typically the size of a human thumb that
consists of flash memory. USB flash drives are removable
and rewritable reads and writes to flash memory. They
are a solid-state storage medium that's both inexpensive
and durable. Currently, USB 2.0 flash drives on the
market are able to reach a data transfer speed of 480
Mbit/s USB 3.0 has transmission speeds of up to 5 Gbit/s.
USB Flash drives vary in sizes from 128 Megabytes to 64
Gigabytes. More commonly used sizes vary from 2
Gigabytes -16 Gigabytes.
 Flash Memory Cards
• Flash Memory cards Flash memory is a EEPROM
non-volatile computer storage chip. These Memory
cards currently vary in sizes between 1 Gigabytes
-16 Gigabytes and they transfer data at a rate of
approximately 14.65 MB/s. Inexpensive and
durable, and are very small. It have a size of about 1
inch * 0.75 inch with a thickness of about 2mm.
Flash memory cards also have a smaller version
which is used within cell phones, digital camera,
Tablet Pc etc.,
 Cartridge

•  A removable storage medium (tape, disk,
or memory chip). Some printers have slots in which you
can insert cartridges to load different fonts. A font
loaded from a cartridge is called a font
cartridge or cartridge font. The term removable
cartridge usually refers to a type of hard disk that you
can remove. Removable cartridges offer the speed of
/hard disks along with the portability of floppy disks.
• For laser and ink-jet printers, a toner cartridge is a metal
container that holds the toner.
 Cache Memory
• Pronounced cash, a special high-
speed storage mechanism. Cache can be
either a reserved section of main memory or
an independent high-speed storage device.
Two types of caching are commonly used
in personal computers: memory
caching and disk caching.
 Memory Caching

• A memory cache, sometimes called a cache

store or RAM cache, is a portion of memory made
of high-speed static RAM (SRAM) instead of the
slower and cheaper dynamic RAM (DRAM) used for
main memory. Memory caching is effective because
most programs access the
same data or instructions over and over. By keeping
as much of this information as possible in SRAM,
the computer avoids accessing the slower DRAM.
Memory Caching
 L1 and L2 Caches

• Some memory caches are built into

the architecture of microprocessors. The Intel
80486 microprocessor, for example, contains an 8K
memory cache, and the Pentium has a 16K cache.
Such internal caches are often called Level 1 (L1)
caches. Most modern PCs also come with external
cache memory, called Level 2 (L2 caches. These
caches sit between the CPU and the DRAM. Like L1
caches, L2 caches are composed of SRAM but they
are much larger.
 Smart Caching

• When data is found in the cache, it is called

a cache hit, and the effectiveness of a cache is
judged by its hit rate. Many cache systems use
a technique known as smart caching, in which
the system can recognize certain types of
frequently used data. The strategies for
determining which information should be kept
in the cache constitute some of the more
interesting problems in computer science.
 Registers
• A special, high-speed storage area within the CPU. All data must be
represented in a register before it can be processed. For example, if two
numbers are to be multiplied, both numbers must be in registers, and the
result is also placed in a register. (The register can contain the address of
a memory location where data is stored rather than the actual data itself.)
The number of registers that a CPU has and the size of each (number
of bits) help determine the power and speed of a CPU. For example a 32-
bit CPU is one in which each register is 32 bits wide. Therefore, each
CPU instruction can manipulate 32 bits of data.
• Usually, the movement of data in and out of registers is
completely transparent to users, and even to programmers. Only assembly
language programs can manipulate registers. In high-level languages, the
compiler is responsible for translating high-level operations into low-level
operations that access registers.
 Registers contd...
• In a computer, a register is one of a small set of data holding places
that are part of a computer processor . A register may hold a
computer instruction , a storage address, or any kind of data (such
as a bit sequence or individual characters). Some instructions
specify registers as part of the instruction. For example, an
instruction may specify that the contents of two defined registers
be added together and then placed in a specified register. A
register must be large enough to hold an instruction - for example,
in a 32-bit instruction computer, a register must be 32 bits in
length. In some computer designs, there are smaller registers - for
example, half-registers - for shorter instructions. Depending on the
processor design and language rules, registers may be numbered
or have arbitrary names.
 Sequential Access vs. Direct Access Devices
•  All peripheral devices allow files to be processed sequentially: you
start at the beginning of the file and work through each record in
turn. One important advantage of sequential files is that different
records can have different lengths; the minimum record length is zero
but the maximum is system-dependent.
• Sequential files behave as if there were a pointer attached to the file
which always indicates the next record to be transferred. On devices
such as terminals and printers you can only read or write in strict
sequential order, but when a file is stored on disc or tape it is possible
to use the REWIND statement to reset this pointer to the start of the
file, allowing it to be read in again or re-written. On suitable files the
BACKSPACE statement can be used to move the pointer back by one
record so that the last record can be read again or over-written.
 Sequential Access vs. Direct Access Devices
contd....
• One unfortunate omission from the Fortran Standard is that the
position of the record pointer is not defined when an existing
sequential file is opened. Most Fortran systems behave sensibly and
make sure that they start at the beginning of the file, but there are a
few rogue systems around which make it advisable, in portable
software, to use REWIND after the OPEN statement. Another
problem is how append new records to an existing sequential file.
Some systems provide (as an extension) an ``append" option in
the OPEN statement, but the best method using Standard Fortran is
to open the file and read records one at a time until the end-of-file
condition is encountered; then use BACKSPACE to move the pointer
back and clear the end-of-file condition. New records can then be
added in the usual way.
 Sequential Access vs. Direct Access Devices
contd....
• The alternative access method is direct-access which allows
records to be read and written in any order. Most systems
only permit this for files stored on random-access devices
such as discs; it is sometimes also permitted on tapes. All
records in a direct-access file must be the same length so
that the system can compute the location of a record from
its record number. The record length has to be chosen when
the file is created and (on most systems) is then fixed for the
life of the file. In Fortran, direct-access records are numbered
from one upwards; each READ or WRITE statement specifies
the record number at which the transfer starts.
 Sequential Access vs. Direct Access Devices
contd....
• Records may be written to a direct-access file in any order.
Any record can be read provided that it exists, i.e. it has
been written at some time since the file was created.
Once a record has been written there is no way of
deleting it, but its contents can be updated, i.e. replaced,
at any time.
• A few primitive operating systems require the maximum
length of a direct-access file to be specified when the file
is created; this is not necessary in systems which comply
fully with the Fortran Standard.
Sequential Access vs. Direct Access Devices
contd....
 Sequential Access vs. Direct Access Devices
contd....
• Comparing random versus sequential operations is one
way of assessing application efficiency in terms of disk
use. Accessing data sequentially is much faster than
accessing it randomly because of the way in which the disk
hardware works. The seek operation, which occurs when
the disk head positions itself at the right disk cylinder to
access data requested, takes more time than any other
part of the I/O process. Because reading randomly
involves a higher number of seek operations than does
sequential reading, random reads deliver a lower rate of
throughput. The same is true for random writing.