Week 9

EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC

DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY,
MAGNETIC TAPE
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

OBJECTIVES

At the end of the lesson the learner will be able to:

Define external memories
Identify the types of magnetic disk
Understand RAID
Identify the types of optical memory
Define magnetic tape
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

EXTERNAL MEMORIES

External memory can mean many things but what most

people think of is portable storage. Portable storage can
range from a portable flash drive, hard drive or a memory
card that is used in a device such as a camera. Using
external memory is a good way to keep files such as
pictures, videos and other types of files in a safe place.
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

EXTERNAL MEMORIES

EXAMPLES:
• External Hard Drives
• Flash Drives
• Memory Cards
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

COPYING DATA

Copying data from these external memory sources is

done the same way as copying data to and from the
existing hard drive. A memory card that is used with
an external device however will need to have an
adapter to connect to a computer. Adapters can be
found at many places online such as Buy,com and
Amazon.
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

STORAGE SOLUTIONS

These external devices are great storage solutions

that can be taken anywhere when a person is on the
go. With the proper cables that are needed to
connect to a computer they can be used on nearly
any type of computer system. External memory is
generally cheaper than installing a separate CD or
DVD writer to an existing computer.
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

MAGNETIC DISK

A magnetic disk is a storage device that uses a

magnetization process to write, rewrite and
access data. It is covered with a magnetic
coating and stores data in the form of tracks,
spots and sectors.
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

MAGNETIC DISK

EXAMPLES OF MAGNETIC DISKS:

• HARD DISKS
• ZIP DISKS
• FLOPPY DISKS
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

REDUNDANT ARRAY OF INDEPENDENT DISK (RAID)

(Redundant Array of Independent Disks) A disk or

solid state drive (SSD) subsystem that increases
performance or provides fault tolerance or both.
RAID uses two or more physical drives and a RAID
controller, which is plugged into motherboards that
do not have RAID circuits.
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

RAID CONFIGURATIONS
RAID 0 - Striping for Performance (Popular)
Widely used for gaming, striping interleaves data across multiple drives for performance. However, there are no
safeguards against failure. See RAID 0.
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

RAID CONFIGURATIONS
RAID 1 - Mirroring for Fault Tolerance (Popular)
Widely used, RAID 1 writes two drives at the same time. It provides the highest reliability but doubles the number of
drives needed. RAID 10 combines RAID 1 mirroring with RAID 0 striping for both safety and performance. See RAID
1 and RAID 10.
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

RAID CONFIGURATIONS
RAID 3 - Speed and Fault Tolerance
Data are striped across three or more drives for performance, and parity is computed for safety. Similar to RAID 3,
RAID 4 uses block level striping but is not as popular. See RAID 3 and RAID parity.
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

RAID CONFIGURATIONS
RAID 5 - Speed and Fault Tolerance (Popular)
Data are striped across three or more drives for performance, and parity is computed for safety. RAID 5 is similar to
RAID 3, except that the parity is distributed to all drives. RAID 6 offers more reliability than RAID 5 by performing
more parity computations. For more details, see RAID 5.
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

RAID CONFIGURATIONS
Big RAID
EMC has been a leader in high-end RAID systems for years with systems storing multiple terabytes of data. (Image
courtesy of EMC Corporation.)
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

RAID CONFIGURATIONS
Little RAID
Arco was first to provide RAID 1 on IDE disk drives rather than SCSI. This two-drive unit connected to the
motherboard with one cable like a single drive.
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

RAID CONFIGURATIONS
Early RAID
This RAID prototype was built by University of Berkeley graduate students in 1992. Housing 36 320MB disk drives,
total storage was 11GB.
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

RAID CONFIGURATIONS
USB RAID
Super Talent's USB 3.0 RAID drives provide RAID 0 storage that is faster than an internal hard drive.
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

OPTICAL MEMORY

Optical storage refers to recording data using light.

Typically, that's done using a drive that can contain a
removable disk and a system based on lasers that
can read or write to the disk. If you've ever used a
DVD player to watch a movie, put a CD in a player to
listen to music or used similar disks in your desktop
or laptop computer, you've used optical storage.
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

OPTICAL MEMORY

TYPES OF OPTICAL STORAGE

• CD
• DVD
• BLU-RAY DISK
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

MAGNETIC TAPE

Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic

recording, made of a thin, magnetizable coating
on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was
developed in Germany in 1928, based on
magnetic wire recording.
Week 9: EXTERNAL MEMORIES, MAGNETIC DISK, RAID, OPTICAL MEMORY, MAGNETIC TAPE

REFERENCES

https://itstillworks.com/types-external-memory-5038784.html
https://www.techopedia.com/definition/8210/magnetic-disk
https://www.britannica.com/technology/computer-
memory/Auxiliary-memory#ref93702
https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/50148/raid
https://www.techwalla.com/articles/types-optical-storage-devices
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/ssw_ibm_i_74
/rzam4/rzam4optical.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_tape