Some of you were concerned that I had missed something that was on your revision sheets, so I thought I might revisit it here. In the previous post I had decided to reorganise this section, which wasn’t reflected in the CAS.

Description and exemplification of the appropriate type of storage required for a specific information system including:

Type of device

It is important to pair the correct type of device with a specific information system. Systems that require a lot of storage like video or image libraries often prioritise this over very fast access to a hard drive is used. While systems that require fast access like video editing will make use of solid state devices.

Capacity

The rule of thumb with capacity is bigger is better, however, this can come at a substantial cost. It is therefore important to understand the needs of the IS, a server will require subtancialy more capacity than a presentation for example.

Interface type

Portable Information Systems will require USB ports to connect to. Some IS devices may make use of wirelesss connections. The computer must have the same interface as the IS device.

Comparison of local versus cloud storage
Since the contents of RAM is lost when power is disconnected it needs to be stored, so it can be used latter. Local storage is used to store the information on the computer, such as a hard drive or flash drive. Cloud storage, stores the information on the Internet where it can downloaded and used later.
Comparison of built-in versus portable storage
Built in storage is fixed inside the computer and cannot be removed. This is normally a Hard Drive or Solid State Drive. Portable storage can be moved between computer systems, to allow data to be transferred. E.g. Optical Disc, portable hard drive or flash drive.
Comparison of different interface types and their data transfer speeds including:
Firewire
This is a wired interface that can connect a device to the computer at speeds of up to 800Mbps. This is often used for portable hard drives or digital video cameras. Devices can be daisy chained together so that up to 63 peripherals can be connected.
USB
Universal Serial Bus is a wired interface that can connect a device to a computer at speeds of up to 7.2Gbps. A USB hub is used to connect many devices together up to 127 devices can be connected together. Many different devices can be connected via USB including Keyboards, flash drives and mobile phones.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the amount the data that can transferred in a fixed amount of time. This is often expressed in bits per second (bps). A high bandwidth connection is often referred to as broadband.
Description of different types of storage devices and their media in terms of functionality, speed and capacity (in appropriate units) including:
magnetic
Hard disk drives are an example of magnetic storage. These random access devices are used to store large amounts of data, 10TB disks are available. Although they can be portable, they are quite fragile and need to be handled with care.
optical
CDs, DVDs & Blu-Ray are example of optical storage. The information is stored on a disc and read using a laser. The discs are portable but the drives themselves are very sensitive to vibration and can only be used in fixed location. Optical discs can store up to 50GB on one disc.
rewritable, read-only
Optical discs are available in many configuration and are often suffixed with; -ROM – Can only be read and not written to. -R – Is a recordable disc which can be written to once and read many times -RW – ReWritable discs can be written to many times
solid state
A solid-state drives have the fastest access and transfer times of any storage device. SSDs are portable in the form of flash drives and are very robust. They are however quite expensive and cannot currently store as much as a hard drive.
Description and exemplification of the appropriate type of storage required for a specific information system including: type of device, capacity & interface type
Server Based
Servers require fast, cheap storage with a large capacity. As a result, Hard Disk Drives are used. This allows the most amount of storage with the cheapest cost.
Backup
Optical Discs are often used to backup information. As these discs, can be stored securely in a different place from the computer.
On the move
Solid State Flash Drives are very portable with a large storage capacity. These are robust and not susceptible to damage from vibration.