Storage

Storage is a critical part of your computer, and you need to know a few things about it, so we're going to hit some of the highlights.

Storage plays a critical role in how your computer functions. Before anything gets processed it goes through storage first, in RAM. It also needs instructions on how it's going to operate, and the initial set of instructions comes from storage. Of course it needs a whole operating system, which is stored in storage. Need to save something? That's saved in storage. So storage plays a critical role in how your computer operates.

Characteristics, media, components, form factors and interfaces

We're going to talk about characteristics. Characteristics is how these things perform and act — for instance, is it volatile or nonvolatile? We're going to talk about the media: what exactly it's stored on. This is an example of magnetic media, so what is it being stored on, and what is the technology that we actually store this stuff on? Or what type of component it is: if it's a component of a computer, like a solid state drive, it goes into the computer and it's part of how a computer functions. If it's a form factor, it's how these things are shaped and the size of them, so what is the form factor of that? If it's the protocol or interface, that's how this communicates and how it interfaces with the computer — there's some signaling and different types of signals that happen here. These are all explaining different aspects of storage.

This is an incomplete list. In each one of these categories there's actually a lot more media, components, form factors and characteristics — there's a lot more — but I've created this table to help clarify some things, because there's a little bit of confusion when it comes to these different ideas.

For instance, ROM. The reason it gets confusing is because ROM is a characteristic: ROM is read only memory, so it's the type of storage we have. We could have a CD-ROM, which is a media here. But not only is it a characteristic that we have, it's also a component in a computer: we have ROM on our computer and it's an actual part of the computer. So that gets a little confusing.

Solid state drives are a type of storage, or a component on our computer, but that has the term solid state in it, and really all of these components that I'm showing you right here are solid state components. It also can be volatile or nonvolatile. A solid state drive also has different form factors — it can come in very different shapes and sizes — and it also could come in any one of these different protocols or interfaces.

When we think of flash we think about a flash drive, but flash is just a type of solid state right here. So flash is a type of solid state, and there are actually a lot of other examples, although flash is one of the really prevalent ones that are out there. Solid state drives use flash as well, so the same circuitry and the same type of technology that's in here is in most of our solid state drives as well. We can see these overlapping themes that come through all of these different characteristics, media, components, form factors, and protocols and interfaces.

Volatile and nonvolatile

Storage really falls into two different types of categories: it's either volatile or nonvolatile. Volatile means that it needs a constant source of power in order to save that information. An example is RAM: as soon as we turn the computer off, that memory goes away, and we start all over when we turn the computer back on. That would be an example of volatile memory.

Nonvolatile means it doesn't need power to keep the settings; it stores it long term, so we have some stability with it. One of those nonvolatile memories would be read only memory. An example is this DVD. There are some DVDs that you can read and write to, but this one you cannot — you can only read from it. So it's a read only memory CD-ROM, or the DVD. Since it's a movie, this is actually a DVD, so this is an example of read only memory.

But there's also a computer component that we refer to as being the ROM. Where that lies is, it plays a part in the whole BIOS — the BIOS is actually part of the ROM. What we have is semiconductors, actual physical chips on the board, that carry these instructions, which is the BIOS. It carries the BIOS that holds that information, and it's really designed to just be read from and not really designed to be written to. So we've got that ROM on the motherboard, and when the computer starts up, that BIOS gets loaded into RAM so that it can provide that initial set of instructions. The hardware that does that we call the ROM.

Local storage

ROM is an example of local storage. There are several different local storage aspects to this. We have the ROM, of course, which we just talked about. We have RAM, which is what is staged before it goes into the CPU, or what holds information that comes out of the CPU before it goes out to all the other components. Then we have the storage drives that are on the computer — an example here might be a floppy or disc drive, or it could be a solid state drive. Those are some examples of storage drives that are on your machine.

Storage devices on the motherboard

Here's a motherboard. Let's talk about some of the different storage devices on it. First, we have our RAM right here. This is our random access memory, and that's the direct connection: things get loaded up on here before they get sent to the processor, and then things that come out of the processor can be sent back to here before it gets sent back out to where it needs to go.

We also have our storage. This is our SSD right here, and we can plug that into one of these SATA ports, so now we can have our storage where we're storing our files and our operating system.

Another thing we have right here is our ROM. I'm not 100% sure that this is the ROM chip, but I'm pretty sure it is, because it's close to the battery, and the battery is to keep those BIOS settings. So here is our ROM right there, I believe.

A couple of other things we have on here: there is some memory built into the CPU, and depending on what size of CPU and the generation it is, you'll have different amounts of memory on there within the CPU as it's processing things.

Another thing to point out is that here I have an NVMe, which is one of the technologies, or one of the standards, that have replaced our older solid state drives. This connection looks very different than these PCI connections that we have right here, these PCIe connections — it looks different, but it's the same type of connection, just the pinout's different. This is an older motherboard so it doesn't have the one that can interface with this, but it is the same type of technology that they're using for these PCI. So that is a newer type of solid state drive, a replacement for this solid state drive.

Solid state drives

Here are some examples of solid state drives. They all use solid state. Here on the far right we see a USB flash drive, and it's got a chip on it. I can peel back the sticker on here and we see a similar chip. We peel back the sticker on this one and we could see similar chips on it as well. Finally we have this drive right here — if I were to open it up it would look like that on the inside, so we have chips on there. We would consider all these solid state.

Now, what are the differences? First of all, this is a flash drive, so typically we wouldn't hear this referred to as a solid state drive; we would refer to it as a flash drive, although quite honestly all of these probably have that same flash technology built into it. Flash is just the main technology we use for these semiconductors, for the solid state storage. So this is a flash drive, and it's really the only one that we would refer to as a flash drive. One of the exceptions is the SSD on a maap is called flash as well, so you'll see in some circumstances the main storage of it is called flash. But for the most part we just refer to these USB type drives, these USB flash drives, as being the flash drives. So that is a flash drive right there.

What else do we have? We have the solid state drive, and this is one of the originals that replaced our magnetic drives. We had magnetic drives in the past and we replaced them with the solid state drive. This is the 2 1/2 inch form factor.

At some point in time we started creating smaller form factors. Right here is an example — it's the same thing, same type of technology, except this is an mSATA. That's the form factor, the size and the shape of it. Versus this, which would be an M.2 right here — that's the form factor, the size and the shape.

Then how they plug in and connect are different types of technology, so the signaling and the coding that goes back and forth between the computer. This would be SATA right here. This one, since it is mSATA, would be SATA as well. But this one is NVMe, so it uses the PCI slots to communicate with the computer, so it's a little different than these others. NVMe stands for Non-Volatile Memory Express.

Magnetic storage

Here are some examples of magnetic storage. On the far side I have an audio cassette. Usually we're saving things like songs onto here, however the first computer I had, I would actually save data to these, so it can store data.

Then here we have a floppy disc. The floppy disc now feels like it's not very floppy, but the older version of this that was 5 1/4 inch was very floppy. If you open these up, this has a little slide, so when it slides into the computer it exposes the magnetic side of this, where it actually stores the data. Let's take this apart and see what's on the inside. I'm just going to take that off, and if we look on the inside of this, this is what stores the data, and it is very floppy there. So that is a floppy disc, and this is a 3 1/2 inch floppy disc — all the data and all the fun I had with those.

Now this is a hard drive. It's considered a hard drive mainly because it's actually hard. If we open it up, on the inside here we can see that there's this spinning disc — that's the magnetic, where it stores the little ones and zeros — and it's pretty hard. If you get a bigger one it'll actually make a little "ting" sound like a cymbal. Then this is the reader, so it will swing back and forth and read the ones and zeros on this disc. So that right there is a hard disk.

Here's an example of a tape drive. This is a backup tape drive, and this would come out and then store the little ones and zeros on here, very similar to what this looks like except it's just a little different format. It stores the ones and zeros on this tape drive. Then this would be encased in a cassette, and I would put all these different cassettes into the system, and it would actually store a lot of data. But it was very slow, because it actually had to pull this whole thing out and read all of that data, and then it'd have to wind it all back up. So those are some examples of magnetic storage.

Optical drives

Here are some examples of an optical drive. An optical drive reads DVDs and CDs. What we have here is one from a laptop and this is one from a desktop machine, and I've torn them apart so we can see the insides.

Essentially we would slip the DVD into here and then it would close up. This is the spindle that would then come up and read that disc, or spin that disc, and then this is the reading head. A little laser shoots out and will send a laser that will hit little micro bumps that are along the CD, and that's what would actually send a signal back, and then it would read that signal. So this goes back and forth, and we can see something similar on this laptop one. It's called optical because it's using visible light in order to read these CDs and DVDs.

Hopefully that gives you some insight into these different technologies and how they interplay with each other. We have these different characteristics, media, components, form factors, and protocols and interfaces, and there are certain combinations of these that we use for certain aspects when it comes to storage.