What is data storage?

Data storage refers to magnetic, optical or mechanical media that records and preserves
digital information for ongoing or future operations
Today, organizations and users require data storage to meet today's high-level
computational needs like big data projects, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and
the internet of things (IoT). And the other side of requiring huge data storage amounts is
protecting against data loss due to disaster, failure or fraud. So, to avoid data loss,
organizations can also employ data storage as backup solutions.

How data storage works

In simple terms, modern computers, or terminals, connect to storage devices either
directly or through a network. Users instruct computers to access data from and store data
to these storage devices. However, at a fundamental level, there are two foundations to
data storage: the form in which data takes and the devices data is recorded and stored on.
 Data storage devices
To store data, regardless of form, users need storage devices. Data storage devices come in
two main categories: direct area storage and network-based storage.

Direct area storage, also known as direct-attached storage (DAS), is as the name implies.
This storage is often in the immediate area and directly connected to the computing
machine accessing it. DAS devices include floppy disks, optical discs—compact discs (CDs)
and digital video discs (DVDs)—hard disk drives (HDD), flash drives and solid-state drives
(SSD)

Network-based storage allows more than one computer to access it through a network,
making it better for data sharing and collaboration. Its off-site storage capability also makes
it better suited for backups and data protection. Two common network-based storage
setups are network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN).
Types of Storage Devices
There are many secondary storage devices, including magnetic drums, magnetic tapes,
magnetic disks, and optical disks. These devices vary with respect to their versatility,
durability, capacity, and speed.

Magnetic Drums.
These are very early high-speed, direct access storage devices used in the 1950s and 1960s.
The magnetic drum is a metal cylinder coated with a sensitive magnetic material. The
cylinder has tracks around its circumference. Each track has its own read/write head, and
data are stored as magnetic spots on the tracks. Like the magnetic disk, which was
introduced later, the read/write head can move quickly to any track, providing direct access
to the data stored on the drum.
Magnetic Tape.
This is one of the oldest secondary storage devices. It was first used for storing data in
the early 1950s. At that time, the tape was made of a flexible metal and was stored on
reels. The metal tape was plated with a thin film of iron, which allowed data to be stored
as a series of small, magnetized spots. Although the tape provided a compact form of
storage, it was extremely heavy and not universally accepted. It was not until a very thin,
flexible material called mylar was developed that tape processing gained wide
acceptance. This plastic mylar was coated with an iron oxide that could be magnetized to
store data. In the 1950s and 1960s, magnetic tape was the primary means for storing
large amounts of data.
Data are stored on magnetic tape in columns. Each byte of data (eight bits ) utilizes one
column across the width of the tape. Data are stored on the magnetic tape at
different densities . Low density is 1,600 bytes per inch (bpi). Densities of 6,250 bpi and
greater were common in the 1980s.
Magnetic tapes are an inexpensive and relatively stable way to store large volumes of
data. Tapes can be used repeatedly, although time and environmental factors such as
heat and humidity do affect them. The principle disadvantage of magnetic tape is that it
stores data sequentially—that is, one record is stored right after another. Retrieving data
from the tape is slow since the tape must be read from the beginning up to the location
of the desired record. Thus, magnetic tapes are not a good choice when one needs to
find information rapidly
Magnetic Disk.
Currently, the most widely used secondary storage device is the magnetic disk. There are
two kinds of magnetic disks: hard disks and floppy disks.

Hard disks are thin, metallic platters developed in the 1950s. Each hard disk contains one
or, more commonly, a series of platters that rotate on a shaft at a high rate of speed. The
platters have a top and bottom surface where data can be recorded as magnetic spots.
The platters have concentric circles called tracks where the data are actually stored.

There is a read/write head for each platter surface. These read/write heads float on a
cushion of air and do not actually touch the surface of the disk. When reading data from
the disk, the read head senses the magnetic spots on the surface and transfers the data
to main memory. When writing, the data are transferred from main memory and are
stored as magnetic spots on the recording surface
Floppy disks

The microcomputer utilizes a hard disk, but it also uses floppy disks, also called floppy
diskettes. Floppy disks are the second kind of magnetic disk and are removable. The two
common standard sizes of floppy disks are 8.9 centimeters (3.5 inches) and 13.3
centimeters (5.25 inches). It is difficult today to find a microcomputer that uses the 5.25-
inch floppy disk.

Floppy disks are made up of one platter constructed from polyester film rather than
metal. This polyester film is covered with a magnetic coating. Data are stored on the
floppy disk in much the same manner as on a hard disk—in the form of magnetic spots on
tracks. However, floppy disks use sectors to store data rather than cylinders
As software packages such as Microsoft Office became popular, the need for larger data
capacity for items such as text and graphics in a portable form became necessary. The zip
drive and zip disk were introduced in the 1990s as a relatively inexpensive large-storage-
capacity floppy disk. The zip disk is 8.9 centimeters (3.5 inches), removable, and provides
about 100 megabytes (MB) of data storage. In late 1998, a 250 MB version of the zip disk
was introduced. While this zip disk has double the storage capacity of its predecessor, it is
still only 8.9 centimeters (3.5 inches) in size
Advantages & Disadvantages of magnetic disk

The main advantages of using a magnetic disk as a secondary storage device are its
speed and direct access capability.

Data can be easily and rapidly read, written, or accessed. Floppy disks provide the added
advantage of portability.

Disadvantages of using a magnetic disk as a secondary storage device include cost,

environmental factors, user misuse and abuse, head crashes, and update problems.

The magnetic disk is more expensive than magnetic tape (DAT).

The February 1998 CompUSA catalog reported that DAT cost $49.95 and stored 10,000
MB. This is a $.005 cost per megabyte. An 18 GB hard drive cost $230.00 or $.08 per
megabyte. A 3.5 inch diskette cost $.50 and stored 1.4MB. This is a cost of $.35 per
megabyte. A Zip Plus Drive cost $100.00 and stored 100MG to 250MG. This is a cost of
$1.00 per megabyte.

It was reported by Dataquest, a research firm, that the average cost of data storage
across various media was 15 cents per megabyte in the year 2000. This cost decreased
to 3 cents per megabyte in 2002, as noted by Effy Oz in Management Information
Systems.
Contd.....

Magnetic disks, both hard and floppy, are also susceptible to environmental factors such
as dust, dirt, and smoke. Any of these factors will cause a hard disk to fail. Because of
this, hard disks are sealed. Floppy disks are also vulnerable to environmental factors.
Also, because of their portability, the floppy disk is vulnerable to misuse or abuse by
users.

Head crashes can occur with any magnetic disk technology. This is when the read/write
head touches the surface of the disk platter, destroying it and all of the stored data.

Head crashes are normally caused by misalignment of the platter and the read/write
head.

A head crash renders a magnetic disk unusable.

Another disadvantage of any magnetic disk is that when updating data, the old data
are written over, destroying them instantly and permanently. Unless proper
precautions are taken, data may be written over by mistake.
Optical Disks.
These are the newest secondary storage devices. Originally optical disks were called
optical disk-read-only memory (OD-ROM) and are now called compact disk-read only
memory (CD-ROM). Data are not recorded on optical disks magnetically, but with a
laser device that burns microscopic holes on the surface of the disk. Binary information
(0s and 1s) is encoded by the length of these bumps and the space between them.
Optical disks can store much more data than floppy disks. Data can be stored in the form
of text as well as pictures, sound, and full-motion video. The disks are not as sensitive to
dust, dirt, and smoke as magnetic disks are, and they are portable.
Another optical storage medium is the digital video disk or digital versatile disk (DVD).
This optical disk is the same size as a CD-ROM, but has much higher storage capacity.
DVDs can store large amounts of data, video, graphics, digitized text, and audio, and are
portable
 Types of storage devices

SSD and flash storage

Flash storage is a solid-state technology that uses flash memory chips for writing and
storing data. A solid-state disk (SSD) flash drive stores data using flash memory.

Hybrid storage
SSDs and flash offer higher throughput than HDDs, but all-flash arrays can be more
expensive. Many organizations adopt a hybrid approach, mixing the speed of flash with
the storage capacity of hard drives. A balanced storage infrastructure enables companies
to apply the right technology for different storage needs. It offers an economical way to
transition from traditional HDDs without going entirely to flash.
USB Drives - How do they Work?

USB, which stands for Universal Serial Bus, is an industry standard that was adopted in the
1990s. The USB flash drive, since it first went on the market in the early 2000s, has
become ubiquitous due to its affordability.

Also known as a thumb drive, pen drive or USB stick, USB flash drives are rewritable and
removable, and now reach capacities of up to 1TB thanks to their utilisation of NAND flash
memory. A crucial goal in the development of NAND flash technology has been to reduce
the cost-per-bit and increase chip capacity, with the end goal of flash memory rivalling
traditional hard disk drives. They do, however, present new challenges in terms of data
recovery

[NAND Flash is a type of non-volatile storage technology that does not require power to
retain data. An everyday example would be a mobile phone, with the NAND Flash (or
the memory chip as it's sometimes called) being where data files such as photos, videos
and music are stored on a microSD card]
The main difference between hard disk drives (HDDs) and flash chips found in USB flash
drives is the lack of moving parts, and the reduced risk of physical damage in the latter
because of this.

There is also a difference in the way flash drives writes and stores data; hard disk drives
write data to platters in a linear fashion, to sectors of a standard size. USB flash drives, on
the other hand, spread the individual pieces of data that form files all over the chip, and
can be found in several locations because of this. This can make data recovery quite
tricky.
The Role of Nano-technology in Data Storage Devices and Systems

1. Magnetic Recording.
In hard-disk drives, the magnetic layer of the disk (on which digital information resides) is
nano-structured. A typical cross-sectional diagram of perpendicular magnetic recording
(PMR) media is shown in Fig.

Layer structure of PMR disk. The magnetic recording

layer’s thickness is typically around 10nm, while the soft
under-layer is about 100 nm-thick; other layers are only a
few nanometers thick.
TEM images of the magnetic recording layer, showing CoPtCr
grains of ~5nm diameter embedded in a nonmagnetic SiO2
matrix
Also shown in this figure are TEM images of the CoPtCr granular magnetic material.
Individual magnetic grains are surrounded by nonmagnetic amorphous SiO2,
resulting in reduced magnetic interactions among CoPtCr grains
2. Optical Recording.

Plasmonic data storage is a new mode of optical recording proposed in recent years .
Metallic nano-structures have fairly sharp resonances at specific wavelengths.
The resonance wavelength is sensitive to the geometrical shape and size of the nano-
structure, as well as to its orientation relative to the polarization of the incident light

3. Electronic Data Storage. Static and dynamic random access memories (SRAM and
DRAM),
have long been the primary storage media of electronic computers. Advances in Flash
memory technologies during the past decade have now made these electronic devices a
significant contender in the market for secondary data storage media as well.

While shrinking dimensions brought about by advanced photo-lithography have resulted in

a rapid rise in Flash capacities, their relatively slow data-rates and the prospect of
diminished data retention time.

All these memories rely on electronic switching of nanovolumes of material at the

junctions of a crossed-wire array
Samsung’s multi-chip package PRAM (shown at the
top) uses a cross-wire architecture in which the
GeSbTe alloy (red) sandwiched between crossed
electrical conductors (grey) undergoes a durable but
reversible phase transition between amorphous and
crystalline states.
4. Promising Nano Technologies.

In addition to plasmonic nano-materials, which are metallic, semiconducting nano-

structures such as quantum-dots and quantum-wires have optical and electronic
properties that make them attractive for advanced data storage applications.

In a different arena, patterned media are being developed for various modes of data
storage. Electron-beam lithography and focused ion-beam techniques have been
considered for fabricating the master stamper, followed by a nano-imprint technique for
rapid and inexpensive transfer of the mastered patterns to disk substrates. In addition,
methods of fiber-optical cable manufacturing have significant potential for mass-producing
nano-patterned substrates