Week 1: Day 04 - Storage

Hey everyone, today we're going to look at Storage! This is a short unit, like the last one. Nevertheless, there are many types of storage, and different file sizes to go over. So without further a due, let's start.

Let's start off by differentiating primary and secondary storage. A computer needs a place to store data, so there must always be primary storage. This is often an internal hard drive that comes with your computer, and more importantly your Random Access Memory (RAM). If you have secondary storage, this means you have an external hard drive, USB drive, SD card, DVD, or whatever it may be.

In any case there are several types of storage, and your computer has them guaranteed. All of these storage options can be categorized into two areas, dynamic and persistent. The persistent storage will save your data after the device it's stored on is turned off, while dynamic storage does not. Most storage is persistent, like for example -- hard drives, USB, and cloud storage -- while dynamic storage only accounts for merely RAM. You may think it's bizarre that RAM is a storage component, and I was too when I found out a year ago. What it does is take the data off the CPU using an I/O bus, as I explained in the last blog post, but then after the device powers off, it loses that data.

Now let's talk about the benefits and disadvantages of cloud storage. Recently, there's been a surge in cloud storage services across the globe. The advantage of having such storage available, is that you can access that information anywhere, anytime. However, for you to be able to access that info, you must have internet available. Unfortunately, there are people somewhere who have no connection, so they use local storage. Regardless, internet service is becoming a bigger requisite in the lives of the average person.

Finally, let's have a look at the data storage hierarchy. The units within the hierarchy are in this order:

Byte - Kilobyte - Megabyte - Gigabyte - Terabyte - Petabyte - Exabyte - Zettabyte - Yottabyte

If you're familiar with the metric system, you would have already heard the same prefixes used in other forms of measurements, such as meters, grams, liters, etc. Because of this you can anticipate that one megabyte is made up of 1000 kilobytes. In any case, this hierarchy is the way of measure all digital data worldwide. It should also be noted that there is another measurement --- 1 Gibibyte is 1024 Mebibyte --- these are used by some systems for binary purposes. Since 2009, the World Wide Web has an estimated 500 Exabytes stored. It's 7 years later -- 2016, just imagine how much it is now! That brings this unit to an end, see you next time.