Storage media is the physical layer where digital data is recorded, ranging from magnetic tape and hard disk drives to solid-state chips and optical discs. Understanding the major media categories—magnetic, solid-state, and optical—is foundational to working with computer hardware and data storage systems.
Storage Media Types
This is what we call magnetic media, or more specifically this is a tape backup out of a tape backup system. This would go into a cassette, but this tape would be pulled out and then we'd write ones and zeros onto this magnetic film right here, and so then we could go back and read it, and we would use this for a backup system. Well, this film right here, this tape right here, is called media. Media is where we actually store the ones and zeros onto it.
I like to think of media as the backbone or the basis for everything else when it comes to storing data. How we store data onto these different devices is critical to how it operates and how it interfaces and the rest of what we see right here.
The thing is that anything that we can capture data into could be our media. So if I write something into sand, then the sand is the media. If I etch something into crystal, then that crystal is the media. There are a lot of different ways we could actually store data when it comes to media, but there are a few main ones that we use when it comes to computers, and you could categorize them as paper, optical, magnetic and solid state.
One of the earliest media that we used - and we actually used it for a long time - were punch cards. Punch cards were on paper, and so we had these papers that would have these different punches. We would punch out the code onto here, and then it would get fed into the computer and read and then processed. So that's how we did some initial coding, with these punch cards.
Here are some different media and devices that we can store data on. At the bottom here we have our magnetic storage, in the middle we have our solid state, and at the top we have our optical drive.
As far as magnetic is concerned, here is just a hard disk drive, or HDD. Right here we have an old floppy disc, and I've opened it up so that way we can see the inside. This would spin and you'd have the data stored on it with magnetic signals.
We have a tape drive from tape backup, and so this would unwind and then you would store the data onto that, and then it would wind back up. This would be inside of a cassette that we would have inside of a backup storage device.
The first computer I used actually had cassette tapes, like an audio cassette tape, and you would store data on it. So that's some of the magnetic. Not used nearly as much as it used to be, but there still definitely - we still use things like tape backup and we use magnetic hard disk drives. Not so much the cassettes or the floppy discs here anymore.
In the middle here we have solid state drives. This is just what we usually call a solid state drive right here, and then we have our mSATA. This is inside of a flash - you can see that they're all kind of chips. This is what the inside of this would look like, and we've got those chips that we store data on.
And then optical: we have these little divots on here that can be read by a laser. So we'd pop that into this tray, and then this is a laser that goes back and forth.
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