Storage devices can be primary or secondary, depending on the view taken. In one view, RAM is primary and hard drives are secondary. In another view, all computer storage is primary and peripherals are secondary. Secondary storage can include external drives, floppy disks, and optical media. It’s important to be clear when discussing primary and secondary storage to avoid confusion.
A storage device is a piece of electronic hardware made to store data. Some storage devices have storage as their only function, while others are actually multifunctional devices, which can store data and perform other roles. Storage devices are divided into primary storage devices and secondary storage devices, but there are two different ways to consider which devices are primary and which are secondary. In a view, while current data is stored on primary storage devices, data not currently accessed is stored on secondary storage devices, with all those devices on the computer. In the second view, all storage devices that are part of the computer are primary storage devices, while any peripheral storage is referred to as secondary storage devices.
According to the first view, the main storage device is the random access memory (RAM) of the computer. RAM contains data that is readily available to the CPU (Central Processing Unit) to which it is directly connected. Data in RAM is data that has been loaded by the operating system and active programs and requires electrical current to be maintained there.
The computer hard drive, on the other hand, is secondary storage in this view because it is not directly attached to the CPU. Because it stores data magnetically, the data on the hard drive will remain after the computer is turned off, while the data in RAM will be lost after the computer is turned off because electrical power will no longer be available.
In the second view, where the primary storage devices include all of the computer’s original data storage, both RAM and hard drives, the secondary storage devices can be a variety of other types of external storage and media. This type of secondary storage device can include additional internal drives, external hard drives, floppy disks, tape storage, and USB thumb drives. As far as optical drives are concerned, secondary storage devices might include CDs and DVDs as well as other optical media. Since the internal hard drive of the computer can be considered a primary storage device or a secondary storage device, depending on the view taken, it is important to be clear when talking about primary and secondary storage devices so as not to be misunderstood.
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