1.1.4

• An example of magnetic storage is a hard disk drive
• Magnetic disks are read with a moving head, moving parts makes this media relatively slow and easy to damage
• Hard disk drives are less portable than optical or solid state media due to their lack of durability because of the moving parts
• Hard disk drives have a huge capacity and are relatively cheap so are often suitable for desktop computers
• Solid state drives have no moving parts and don't rely on magnetic properties so are unaffected by magnetic fields
• Solid state drives are more reliable because they are less susceptible to shock and damage as they have no moving parts
• SSDs are considerably lighter than HDDs so are more portable
• SSDs have faster access times than HDDs because they don't have moving parts
• SSDs have a lower power consumption than HDDs
• SSDs are much more expensive than HDDs
• SSDs have a limited number of read-write cycles and they become degraded over time
• Optical media is written to and read by lasers
• Optical disks are: CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray
• Optical disks come in three forms:

  • read-only (CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, BD-ROM)
  • write-once (CD-R, DVD-R, BD-R)
  • rewritable (CD-RW, DVD-RW, BD-RW)
• Optical storage devices are low cost but also low capacity
• Optical storage has faster access speed than HDD but slower than SSD
• Optical storage is very portable but not very durable because quality degrades over time