Modern Optical Storage Disks

Storage Devices: Timeline

Here is a link of a timeline I made using www.timetoast.com explaining the history of storage devices.

New Trends: Online Storage

 Online Storage Service? What it is and why use it?

Online storage is a service that lets you save information on internet servers so you will never lose it and its available on the go wherever there is a computer or sometimes even a mobile phone depending on your service provider.
The benefits of using it is that your innformation is safe from natural disasters like quakes or floods and also from chrashes on your system that would make you lose all.

Heres a link of a page reviewing the top 10 paid online storage providers.

Optical Storage

an Asus external optical drive

Optical storage is a term referring to the storage of data on an optically readable medium. Data is recorded by making marks in a pattern that can be read back with the aid of light, usually a beam of laser light precisely focused on a spinning disc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_storage

This devices do not make direct contact with the disc and the are called optical drives because they use lenses.
Now compact discs are getting obsolete in my opinion because we got dvd's and Blu-ray discs which have a lot more capacity and are just about the same size.Also Blu-ray discs have a scratch resistant layer that prevent those awful scratches that will damage your infomation.

The main difference between an optical storage device and a hard drive is that hdd capacities are way far from actual optical drives and that they do not use magnetism to store information. Instead they use a laser that read or burns pits and lands on a disk.

Technological Improvements

Hardware has been improving with the years and they can change the things we do in a radical way.

• Joystick Evolution

Modern Joystick

Atari Joystick

Ralph H. Baer, inventor of television video games and the Magnavox Odyssey console, released in 1972, created the first video game joysticks in 1967. They were able to control the horizontal and vertical position of a spot displayed on a screen. The earliest known electronic game joystick to be available commercially was released by Sega as part of their 1969 arcade game Missile, a shooter simulation game that used a two-way joystick with a single "fire" button to target and shoot oncoming planes displayed on a projection screen.

URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joystick 

Know Joysticks can simulate real flights and are useful for training pilots because when they are learning they do not need to flight real jets or helicopters when they are novices and also they save money because real flights cost.

We can say that a device first used for gaming know has evolved to a very useful thing because we can take advantages of it in many aspects like I already said.

• Keyboard Evolution

A keyboard originally initiated as a device which triggered electronic switches through an arrange of keys that acted as a mechanical lever.

Today we got ergonomic keyboard that are devices made for the prevention of hand diseases caused by prolonged computing sessions.

Technology has advanced a lot in the last ten years and a touchless keyboard has been developed for disabled peole here is the link of a Gizmodo talking about the device.

• Speakers Evolution

 With the past of the time smaller high fidelity speakers have been developed and the are available at an affordable price in most computer or music shops.

They make the gaming or watching  movies a whole different experience.

Also portable Speakers have been developed and their benefits are that you can enjoy music everywhere and they use rechargable batteries so you do not spend on batteries or disposable batteries so you can enjoy music on the go without the hassle of charging times

 

How a HDD work

Here we got a short video explaining how hard drive disks work.

Hard Drive Parts

Here is an image I made of a HDD with its parts

Western Digital Passport

Western Digital is a well known hard drive disks manufacturer that has been dominating the storage harwadware bussiness.
They are Introducing the WD Passport Elite and it is a great portable HDD that leaved us astonished.
It cames with a backup making software and a tool that lets you recover missing files. It is available in versions from 250GB to 640GB

Hard Drives

Western Digital Black Caviar 1TB HDD

Parts of a HDD

Hard Drives are devices used to store information. There are non-volatile,random access decive for digital data.

In the Image tittled parts of a hard drive disk we can see that in has a motor spindle that is what moves the platters, the actuator is what moves the actuator axis for the head to write data and we can se de connectors.
Modern HDD work at high RPM(From 5,000 to 15,000) and because of it they process information faster.
One disadvantage is that if you are near a big magnet data will be corrupted.

Computer Peripherals

Types of computer storage

Storage Peripherals

 Storage peripherals are classified in three groups.

• The first one is Primary Storage that is the one who can be accessed directly from the CPU (Central Processing Unit) and this type of storage helps processing data.
• The second type of storage peripherals is the Secondary Storage and it is accessible through special hardware and its connected to the mainboard through ports. Is the one where we store all the information.
• The last type of storage peripherals are the Tertiary Storage in wich we found removable media drives as Pen Drives or External HDDS

Input & Output Devices Chart

Input & Output Devices

Hardware is classified in input devies and output devices altought some of them are both input and output such as a touch screen.

• Input Devices: Any piece of hardware that provide data to a processing system. Ex: a keyboard

•  Output Devices: Hardware that is used to communicate the results of processing data to the outside world (Us)