Question

Describe the access methods, capacity, and portability of various secondary storage devices.

Answer 1

Answer:-

access methods:-

In computing, an access method is a program or a hardware mechanism that moves data between the computer and an outlying device such as a hard disk (or other form of storage) or a display terminal. The term is sometimes used to refer to the mechanics of placing or locating specific data at a particular place on a storage medium and then writing the data or reading it. It is also used to describe the way that data is located within a larger unit of data such as a data set or file.

An access method is also an application program interface (API) that a programmer uses to create or access data sets or to read from or write to a display terminal or other output device. Examples are the Virtual Sequential Access Method (VSAM) and the Virtual Telecommunication Access Method (VTAM).

capacity:-

capacity refers to how much disk space one or more storage devices provides. It measures how much data a computer system may contain. For an example, a computer with a 500GB hard drive has a storage capacity of 500 gigabytes. A network server with four 1TB drives, has a storage capacity of 4 terabytes.

various secondary storage devices:-

Hard Drives and SSDs

Some of the most common secondary storage devices are magnetic hard drives – long used in laptop and desktop computers. They use magnetic heads to store and read data on spinning metal disks known as platters. They're generally the first place used to store data on a computer, from the operating system and other applications themselves to files you create on the machine.

More recently, computer manufacturers have started to ship more devices with what are called solid state drives, or SSDs. SSDs don't have moving parts like spinning platters. Instead, they use flash memory, similar to USB flash drives. They're usually faster and less noisy than hard drives, but they can be more expensive for the same amount of data storage, so both devices are still currently in use for different applications.

Tape Drives

For backing up and storing large amounts of data, organizations often turn to magnetic tape. Similar to cassette tapes used for music and VHS tapes for movies, magnetic tape drives can store large amounts of data in a small amount of space at little cost.

Tape has been used for many years, so tape drives have a long history behind them and are known to be reliable and durable, often lasting longer than disks. They're usually slower than disks or SSDs, though, so they're less suited to use with data that requires regular, fast access.

Portable Storage

Some forms of secondary storage are commonly used because they're portable. USB flash drives are a common modern example, and earlier examples include floppy disks, ZIP disks and some that are still in use, such as compact discs, or CDs, and digital versatile discs, or DVDs.

These pieces of equipment are often used to transfer files from one place to another or to distribute recorded media like music and movies. They can also be used to back up files stored on hard drives and SSDs since they're easy to transfer to another computer.