Secondary Storage

File Compression

File compression is commonly used when sending a file from one computer to another over a connection that has limited bandwidth. File compression basically makes the file smaller, hence sending the file would be faster. However, when compressing the file and sending the file to another computer, the computer would have to have a program that will decompress the file to the normal size.

Head Crash

Head crash is referred to a serious malfunction of the disk drive. A head crash usually means that the head has scratched or burned the disk. In a hard disk drive, the head is microinches away from the disk. When the head gets misaligned and touches the disk, much of the data will be lost.

Internet Hard Drive

The main purpose of an Internet hard drive is to be able to access your computer files from any computer, as long as that computer has access to the Internet. An Internet hard drive will allow you to put your computer files into a remote hard drive, then retrieve the same files from another computer. An Internet hard drive has unlimited capacity or unlimited virtual disk space, hence a lot of files can be stored there.

Optical Disc Drive

An optical disc drive can retrieve or store data on discs like CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray discs which are also known as optical discs. These discs hold much more information than the older technology like the floppy disk. An Optical Disc Drive (ODD) uses laser light or electromagnetic waves as part of the process to read and write data to or from the optical disc. ODD is almost the size of a thick soft cover book where the front of the drive has a Open/Close button which will eject and retract the drive bay door. This door enables discs like CDs to be inserted and removed. The back of the ODD is connected to the motherboard. 

Solid-state Storage

A solid-state storage is a data storage device which is also a removable medium that has integrated circuits (IC) rather than optical or magnetic media. A solid-state storage has no mechanical parts. Everything is done electronically, hence data transfer is takes place at a much higher speed than electromechanical disk drives do. Because solid-state storage uses the same interface as hard disk drives, they easily replace them in most applications.