How data is stored?

Anubhav Bhardwaj (IMT2012006)

November 6, 2014

The data that makes up a computerized database is stored in some storage

medium. The data can then be retrived, updated and processed as needed.
Computer storage media form a storage hierarchy with two main categories:

Primary Storage: It includes media that can directly be operated by CPU,

such as main memory and capicitors. They have limeted storage capacity
but provides faster access to data.
Secondary and Tertiary Storage: It includes magnetic disks, optical disks
and tapes. Removable media are considered as tertiary storage. This provides large amount of memory storage but with low access speed because
the data from secondary and tertiary storage can not be directly accessed
by the CPU, rst it must be copied to primary storage.
The Memory hierarchy is shown below and expmained how data is stored on
dierent physical storage devices:

Hard Disk:

The part of the hard disk that stores the data is known as platter. Platters are
circular disk made of a non magnetic material. Platters are further separated
in to the tracks and sectors where tracks are concentric circles while sectors are
pie shaped wedges on the track.
Hard disk stores information in the form of magnetic elds. Data is stored
digitally in the form of tiny magnetized regions on the platter where each region
represents a bit.
To write a data on the hard disk, a magnetic eld is placed on the tiny
eld in one of these two polarities: N-S  If North Pole arrives before the south
pole and S-N  if the south pole arrives before the north pole while the eld is
accessed.
Pen Drive(Flash Drives) and Memory Cards:

The data on a Pen Drive is stored in the form of the array of transistors. This
array of transistors is called as the cells. Each of these cell stores atleast one bit
of information.
Transistors keep this information while current if owing through them,
but for oine mode they have another gate, called a oating gate This traps
electrons to maintain the transistor's value, even when no current is present.
The data can be stored in more than a bit or specically only one bit per
cell. This is done by the technique of varying the number of electrons that are
placed over the oating gate of the cell.
Magnetic Tapes:

The tape is made of a thin plastic base material with a coating of ferric oxide
powder on it. This oxide is a ferromagnetic material, so when the tape will be
exposed to the magnetic eld it is permanently magnetized by the eld.
Floppy Drives:

It consists of a single platter simmilar to tht in hard drives. It is of very less

capicity and the access time is also very high.
The computer hardware and the oppy-disk-drive controller start the motor
in the diskette drive to spin the oppy disk. This disk also consists of tracks
and sectors.
The read-write head stops at the track and write head puts data on the
diskette by magnetizing minute, iron, bar-magnet particles embedded in the
diskette surface.

References
[1] http://computer.howstuworks.com/oppy-disk-drive3.htm

[2] http://electronics.howstuworks.com/gadgets/audio-music/cassette1.htm
[3] https://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090717032615AAv5kC8
[4] www.engineersgarage.com/mygarage/how-data-is-stored-on-hard-disk