Keywords Secondary Storage Optical Magnetic Solid State Durability

Keywords Secondary Storage, Optical, Magnetic, Solid State, Durability, Reliability, Portability, Capacity, Speed. Storage Secondary Storage

Secondary Storage Question 1: What is Secondary Storage? Objectives Answer: Long term storage of data, files, software, OS. BEGINNER: Identify common types of storage. Question 2: Why do we need to store these ADVANCED: Match storage devices to the type of storage they are. EXPERT: Explain the characteristics of common types of storage. things? Answer: To access it again later To use software To interact with the computer Question 3: What would happen without secondary storage? Answer: Software would need to be installed each time we use it and you couldn’t save any files, data, images, videos etc.

Types of Storage Objectives 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. SOLID STATE This is made of microchips (switches) The state of the switches determine if a 1, or 0 is stored. 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 BEGINNER: Identify common types of storage. ADVANCED: Match storage devices to the type of storage they are. EXPERT: Explain the characteristics of common types of storage.

Task Can you complete this table? Objectives BEGINNER: Identify common types of storage. ADVANCED: Match storage devices to the type of storage they are. EXPERT: Explain the characteristics of common types of storage. Device Hard Disk Drive Solid State Drive Blu ray DVD ROM SD Card USB Memory Stick CD ROM Tape Drives Magnetic Optical Solid state

Task Answers: Objectives BEGINNER: Identify common types of storage. ADVANCED: Match storage devices to the type of storage they are. EXPERT: Explain the characteristics of common types of storage. Device Hard Disk Drive Magnetic Optical Solid state Solid State Drive Blu ray DVD ROM SD Card USB Memory Stick CD ROM Tape Drives

Characteristics Objectives BEGINNER: Identify common types of storage. ADVANCED: Match storage devices to the type of storage they are. EXPERT: Explain the characteristics of common types of storage. DEFINITION: A characteristic is a feature, attribute or distinguishing trait. 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?

Characteristic Task Type of device Objectives BEGINNER: Identify common types of storage. ADVANCED: Match storage devices to the type of storage they are. EXPERT: Explain the characteristics of common types of storage. Capacity Speed Portability Durability Reliability Cost Optical 3 3 2 2 3 2 Magnetic 1 2 3 3 2 1 Solid State 2 1 1 3 Based on your research and knowledge – is 1 best or 3 best? The table has ‘ 1’ as being the best – ‘ 3’ is least good. These rankings are ‘in general’, there are likely to be many individual devices that do not quite fit this pattern.

Quick Fire Questions 1. What is secondary storage? Objectives BEGINNER: Discuss the two types of memory and why they are needed. ADVANCED: Explain the differences between RAM and ROM. EXPERT: Explain what happens if your computer doesn’t have enough memory. 2. Why do we need secondary storage? 3. What are the 3 types of storage? 4. What type of storage is a USB memory stick? 5. What type of storage is a CD-ROM? 6. What type of storage is a HDD? 7. What type of storage is the fastest to read data from? 8. What type of storage is the most expensive per GB? 9. What type of storage is the most reliable? 10. What type of storage is the least durable?