Data Storage - History, Technologies, and Challenges

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Recommended: Modern data storage devices

Data storage covers many areas. Anywhere information is stored for later retrieval could be considered "data storage." While it is not the first thing we would think of, a bill board advertisement is data storage. The advertisement (data) is meant to be read (retrieved) by many people. Other examples that might more readily come to mind include check books (storing your financial information), filing cabinets and books, among many others. What we will attempt to do here is present a (brief) history of data storage, especially as it applies to computers, and outline the current technologies that are used to store data, and their limitations. We also want to discuss the exciting data-storage technologies that are on the horizon. These new technologies will allow data storage to continue to be inexpensive and reliable. Computers, when it gets right down to it, only have two states which are recognized: on and off. As it processes information, all it really sees are a series of ones and zeros. These ones and zeros are called "bits," and computers are what are called "binary machines," meaning they process ones and zeros, or binary information. So, a character such as S is represented to the computer as 01010011 (8 bits are known as a byte). Pay attention! This will be important later, as this is how computers store data as well. A brief, yet (almost) entirely inaccurate, history of data storage. A really long time ago, man started wanting to store data. He realized that always trying to rely on human memory can have its pitfalls. There had to be a way to augment the human's capacity to remember. Thus, data storage. The first attempts at data storage used sun dried clay tablets with characters inscribed in them. They realized very quickly that this was not entirely efficient. You didn't have to write much before you couldn't carry it around any more. Pocketbooks® would have never flown, let alone walked. Well, it could have walked, but with great difficulty. But I digress. The search began for more efficient methods of data storage. The Egyptians came up with the idea of making paper out of papi--, papy--, river reeds. Now they could store a lot of information, in funny little characters that no one could read until the Rosetta Stone, in a much smaller amount of space.

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