Backing Storage
In computers, backing storage is widely-used by the majority of the community. They are useful for many things, mainly for keeping document back-ups to ensure that work is not lost if the main hard disk fails and potentially goes corrupt, the data is kept on the other storage device to ensure that all work can be recovered. Backing storage is extremely important, especially in business and enterprise because the loss of significant figures and data could be catastrophic for said business, hence it is absolutely crucial to ensure that any failures can be rectified. In this page, I will go through some of the main backing storage devices and additions.
Optical Media (Type of Backing Storage)
Optical media is a specific type of storage media that is used to hold content in digital-form, it is also important to note that they are written and read by a laser. It is highly favoured over another type of used-media known as magnetic media (Floppy Disks are magnetic media). Firstly being the storage capacity, Optical Media can hold up to 6 gigabytes on some devices whereas a normal floppy disk can only hold 1.44 megabytes which is a significant amount difference capacity-wise. Not only this, but Optical Media are also made for longer endurance, meaning they're made to last longer than floppy disks and other more-traditional storage media. These are specifically important to computer systems as they can pose as back-ups and aid security for a user and businesses.
Portable and Fixed Drives (Types of Backing Storage)
Portable Drives are separate devices that have their own form of fan supply and also their own power supply - these are not originally connected to the computer, however are used to put transfer data to-and-from the computer, the connection used is typically a USB connection. Below is an external hard-drive which is a portable device.
Fixed Drives are simply what we call hard drives that are inside the computer originally, hence the name 'fixed' is used. It is fixed because unlike portable drives, it cannot be removed with any ease, like a removable disk - since Fixed drives are mostly internal in the computer. Below is an image of a fixed drive.
Data Transfer Rate (Performance Factor)
The data transfer rate is a simply concept to understand, it is the rate in which data can be transmitted between the devices. This rate is usually measured in mbps (Megabits per second) or kbps (Kilobits per second). As technology is advanced and file sizes are increasing by significant amounts, we're always looking for the highest data transfer rate in order to keep good efficiency. In the picture below, we can see how crucial data transfer is and maybe infer from this as to why we need the higher speeds to equate from the already-fast advancing technology.
Capacity (Performance Factor)
Capacity is solely talking about transaction processing capability and the storage of a computer system specifically, but can also refer to a network. The bigger the capacity, the more amount of items and data you can have. Computer capacity can be measured in many ways, here are a couple of some measure-methods: Kilobytes, Gigabytes, Megabytes and Terabytes.