SECONDARY STORAGE DEVICES

1.Magnetic Tape:- Magnetic tape use in cassettes. It is a plastic tape

with magnetic coating. The data is store in the form of tiny segments of
magnetized and de magnetized portion on the surface of the material.
Magnetized portion of the surface refers to bit 1 where as demagnetized
portion refers to bit value o
Magnetic tapes are very durable and can be erased as well as reused. There
types are the least expensive and taking back up. However , these are not
suitable for data files that need to be revised or updated as it store data in a
sequential manner which means that the user must advance or rewind the
data to the position where the requested data states . Tapes are also slow due
to nature of the media

2. Magnetic disk: the various types of magnetic disks

are as follows:1.FLOPPY DISKS
A floppy disk is a secondary storage device. It is a circular piece of plastic
material coated with particles, which are magnetized. This thin plastic sheet is
protected from outside by a plastic cover to prevent the sensitive data stored
on them. The commonly used floppy disks are of 3.5 diameter. Floppies are
used to store data and transfer them from one computer to another. Due to
their size and portability they are the most popular storage mediums in offices
and at homes. The data inside the floppies are stored in tracks and sectors. The
entire floppy is divided into circular segments called tracks. Each track is given
a unique number. The outermost track is referred as 0 and the track inner to
them is 1 and so on. Each track is further divided into segments called sectors.
The number of segments in each track has the same capacity. The size of the
floppy is about 1.3mb
2.HARD DISK
A hard disk is fixed inside the cabinet of CPU (Central Processing Unit). It is
made up of many rigid metal platters coated to store data magnetically. The

hard disk rotates while recording data. This rotation speed is measured in the
unit of revolutions per minute (rpm). The normal speed of hard disks is 3600
revolutions per second. The read/write head of the hard disks moves across its
surface. The storage capacity of the hard disks is many times more than the
floppy disks. The normal storage capacity of hard disks installed inside the
Pentium-IV machines now a day is 40 Gigabytes. Due to large storage capacity
it is preferred to store all important data into the hard disks of the computers.
The data stored in the hard disks are retrieved faster as compared to the
floppy disks as they are installed inside the computer.
3.CD-ROM
Compact Disks most popularly known as CDs are the most attractive storage
device these days. They are Read only memory device as without the CD
writers we cannot store our files and folders on them. The diameter of the CD
ranges from 10 cms to 30 cms. A typical CD is of 13 cm diameter. One CD can
store 600 MB to 750 MB data on it. Laser reads the normally used CDs. So once
the data is stored into the CD ROM it cannot be erased. Recently writable CDs
are also introduced in the market but they are not so common. The read/write
speed of a CD-ROM is average access tune is 125 milliseconds. CD comprises
of a transparent thin layer of aluminium covering the pitted surface for
reflectivity. The data may be in the form of text, image, sound, video clips,
animated movies or their combinations. The CD Rom drive are mostly used to
keep back ups & access the data for reading