The standard in the 21st century is for computers to come equipped with a certain amount of storage on their hard drives. Typical sizes are 160 GB (gigabytes), 250 GB, or 500 GB. By the standards of the original 1956 disk drives, which could hold 5 megabytes (MB), they are gigantic. However, the size of applications and certain types of files, such as media files, means that even these large hard drives can fill up quickly. Also, a backup is often necessary for security reasons. For these reasons, external storage solutions, sometimes called secondary storage devices, are often used.
A USB flash drive, a type of secondary storage device.
Over the years, a variety of secondary storage devices have been designed and used. Some are much less popular today, including vacuum tubes, punched cards and punched tape, and magnetic drums. Floppy disks, also called floppy disks, both 5 1/4 inches (13.335 cm) and 3 1/2 inches (8.89 cm) came and went in the 20th century. Zip disks, which are similar in size to smaller floppy disks, survive and store between 100 and 750 MB of data, as does the REV disk, which stores up to 90 GB of data. Magnetic tape is still a storage device and has been used for more than 50 years.
An external hard drive.
Various types of CDs and DVDs are commonly used secondary storage devices. Both are types of optical disks, written and read by light. They are three types. Reading examples include CDs, CD-ROMS, DVD-ROMS, and DVD-Videos. Examples of Write Once Read Many (WORM) include CR-R, DVD-R, DVD+R, and WORM. Finally, optical secondary storage devices include CD-RW, DVD-RAMS, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, and MO.
Secondary storage devices may include zip drives.
Other storage devices include external hard drives. They can be mobile or desktop models. Some are made not just for storage, but also for streaming music, movies, or photos to media devices like Xbox 360® or PlayStation® 3.
Smartphones and digital cameras store digital information on micro SD cards.
USB flash drives come in many models and store from 512 MB to 256 GB, the storage capacity of the Kingston® DataTraveler® 300, which according to the manufacturer is the largest USB flash drive in the world. These secondary storage devices are also known as flash drives, thumb drives, thumb drives, and other names. Many USB flash drives need to be attached to a keychain or worn around the neck like a lanyard.
CDs can be used as a secondary storage device.
Flash drives are used as a portable storage device.
Floppy disks are secondary storage devices.
