Computer data storage

Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, refers to computer components and recording media that retain digital data used for computing for some interval of time. Computer data storage provides one of the core functions of the modern computer(SONY VGP-BPS8 battery), that of information retention. It is one of the fundamental components of all modern computers, and coupled with a central processing unit (CPU, a processor), implements the basic computer model used since the 1940s(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ Battery).

In contemporary usage, memory usually refers to a form of semiconductor storage known as random-access memory, typically DRAM (Dynamic-RAM) but memory can refer to other forms of fast but temporary storage(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ11S Battery). Similarly, storage today more commonly refers to storage devices and their media not directly accessible by the CPU (secondary or tertiary storage) — typically hard disk drives, optical disc drives, and other devices slower than RAM but more permanent(SONY vgp-bps9 battery). Historically, memory has been called main memory, real storage or internal memory while storage devices have been referred to as secondary storage, external memory or auxiliary/peripheral storage(sony vgp-bpl9 battery).

The contemporary distinctions are helpful, because they are also fundamental to the architecture of computers in general. The distinctions also reflect an important and significant technical difference between memory and mass storage devices, which has been blurred by the historical usage of the term storage. Nevertheless, this article uses the traditional nomenclature(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ32 Battery).

Purpose of storage

Many different forms of storage, based on various natural phenomena, have been invented. So far, no practical universal storage medium exists, and all forms of storage have some drawbacks. Therefore a computer system usually contains several kinds of storage, each with an individual purpose(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ440N Battery).

A digital computer represents data using the binary numeral system. Text, numbers, pictures, audio, and nearly any other form of information can be converted into a string of bits, or binary digits, each of which has a value of 1 or 0(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ280E Battery). The most common unit of storage is the byte, equal to 8 bits. A piece of information can be handled by any computer whose storage space is large enough to accommodate the binary representation of the piece of information, or simply data. For example, using eight million bits, or about one megabyte, a typical computer could store a short novel(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ460E Battery).

Traditionally the most important part of every computer is the central processing unit (CPU, or simply a processor), because it actually operates on data, performs any calculations, and controls all the other components(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ190 Battery).

Without a significant amount of memory, a computer would merely be able to perform fixed operations and immediately output the result. It would have to be reconfigured to change its behavior(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ150E Battery). This is acceptable for devices such as desk calculators or simple digital signal processors. Von Neumann machines differ in that they have a memory in which they store their operating instructions and data. Such computers are more versatile in that they do not need to have their hardware reconfigured for each new program, but can simply be reprogrammed with new in-memory instructions(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ260E Battery); they also tend to be simpler to design, in that a relatively simple processor may keep state between successive computations to build up complex procedural results. Most modern computers are von Neumann machines(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ140E Battery).

In practice, almost all computers use a variety of memory types, organized in a storage hierarchy around the CPU, as a trade-off between performance and cost. Generally, the lower a storage is in the hierarchy, the lesser its bandwidth and the greater its access latency is from the CPU. This traditional division of storage to primary, secondary, tertiary and off-line storage is also guided by cost per bit(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ11l Battery).

Hierarchy of storage

Primary storage

Direct links to this section: Primary storage, Main memory, Internal Memory.

Primary storage (or main memory or internal memory), often referred to simply as memory, is the only one directly accessible to the CPU. The CPU continuously reads instructions stored there and executes them as required. Any data actively operated on is also stored there in uniform manner(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ11z Battery).

Historically, early computers used delay lines, Williams tubes, or rotating magnetic drums as primary storage. By 1954, those unreliable methods were mostly replaced by magnetic core memory. Core memory remained dominant until the 1970s, when advances in integrated circuit technology allowed semiconductor memory to become economically competitive(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ11m Battery).

This led to modern random-access memory (RAM). It is small-sized, light, but quite expensive at the same time. (The particular types of RAM used for primary storage are also volatile, i.e. they lose the information when not powered).

As shown in the diagram, traditionally there are two more sub-layers of the primary storage, besides main large-capacity RAM(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ18m Battery):

Processor registers are located inside the processor. Each register typically holds a word of data (often 32 or 64 bits). CPU instructions instruct the arithmetic and logic unit to perform various calculations or other operations on this data (or with the help of it). Registers are the fastest of all forms of computer data storage(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ21m Battery).

Processor cache is an intermediate stage between ultra-fast registers and much slower main memory. It's introduced solely to increase performance of the computer. Most actively used information in the main memory is just duplicated in the cache memory, which is faster, but of much lesser capacity(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ410 Battery). On the other hand it is much slower, but much larger than processor registers. Multi-level hierarchical cache setup is also commonly used—primary cache being smallest, fastest and located inside the processor; secondary cache being somewhat larger and slower(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ21 Battery).

Main memory is directly or indirectly connected to the central processing unit via a memory bus. It is actually two buses (not on the diagram): an address bus and a data bus. The CPU firstly sends a number through an address bus, a number called memory address, that indicates the desired location of data(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ160 Battery). Then it reads or writes the data itself using the data bus. Additionally, a memory management unit (MMU) is a small device between CPU and RAM recalculating the actual memory address, for example to provide an abstraction of virtual memory or other tasks(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ210CE Battery).

As the RAM types used for primary storage are volatile (cleared at start up), a computer containing only such storage would not have a source to read instructions from, in order to start the computer. Hence, non-volatile primary storage containing a small startup program (BIOS) is used to bootstrap the computer(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ38M Battery), that is, to read a larger program from non-volatile secondary storage to RAM and start to execute it. A non-volatile technology used for this purpose is called ROM, for read-only memory (the terminology may be somewhat confusing as most ROM types are also capable of random access) (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31z Battery).

Many types of "ROM" are not literally read only, as updates are possible; however it is slow and memory must be erased in large portions before it can be re-written. Some embedded systems run programs directly from ROM (or similar) (Sony Vaio VGN-FZ31S battery), because such programs are rarely changed. Standard computers do not store non-rudimentary programs in ROM, rather use large capacities of secondary storage, which is non-volatile as well, and not as costly(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31E Battery).

Recently, primary storage and secondary storage in some uses refer to what was historically called, respectively, secondary storage and tertiary storage.

Secondary storage

Secondary storage (also known as external memory or auxiliary storage), differs from primary storage in that it is not directly accessible by the CPU(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31J Battery). The computer usually uses its input/output channels to access secondary storage and transfers the desired data using intermediate area in primary storage. Secondary storage does not lose the data when the device is powered down—it is non-volatile(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31M Battery). Per unit, it is typically also two orders of magnitude less expensive than primary storage. Consequently, modern computer systems typically have two orders of magnitude more secondary storage than primary storage and data is kept for a longer time there(SONY VAIO VGN-FZ31B Battery).

In modern computers, hard disk drives are usually used as secondary storage. The time taken to access a given byte of information stored on a hard disk is typically a few thousandths of a second, or milliseconds(HP PAVILION DV6000 battery). By contrast, the time taken to access a given byte of information stored in random access memory is measured in billionths of a second, or nanoseconds. This illustrates the significant access-time difference which distinguishes solid-state memory from rotating magnetic storage devices: hard disks are typically about a million times slower than memory(SONY VGP-BPS13 Battery). Rotating optical storage devices, such as CD and DVD drives, have even longer access times. With disk drives, once the disk read/write head reaches the proper placement and the data of interest rotates under it, subsequent data on the track are very fast to access. As a result, in order to hide the initial seek time and rotational latency, data are transferred to and from disks in large contiguous blocks(SONY VGP-BPS13B/B Battery).

When data reside on disk, block access to hide latency offers a ray of hope in designing efficient external memory algorithms. Sequential or block access on disks is orders of magnitude faster than random access(Dell INSPIRON 1525 battery), and many sophisticated paradigms have been developed to design efficient algorithms based upon sequential and block access . Another way to reduce the I/O bottleneck is to use multiple disks in parallel in order to increase the bandwidth between primary and secondary memory(Dell INSPIRON E1505 battery).

Some other examples of secondary storage technologies are: flash memory (e.g. USB flash drives or keys), floppy disks, magnetic tape, paper tape, punched cards, standalone RAM disks, and Iomega Zip drives(Dell INSPIRON 1420 battery).

The secondary storage is often formatted according to a file system format, which provides the abstraction necessary to organize data into files and directories, providing also additional information (called metadata) describing the owner of a certain file, the access time, the access permissions, and other information(Dell INSPIRON 1520 battery).

Most computer operating systems use the concept of virtual memory, allowing utilization of more primary storage capacity than is physically available in the system. As the primary memory fills up, the system moves the least-used chunks (pages) to secondary storage devices (to a swap file or page file) (Dell INSPIRON 1464 battery), retrieving them later when they are needed. As more of these retrievals from slower secondary storage are necessary, the more the overall system performance is degraded(Dell INSPIRON 1564 battery).

Tertiary storage

Tertiary storage or tertiary memory, provides a third level of storage. Typically it involves a robotic mechanism which will mount (insert) and dismount removable mass storage media into a storage device according to the system's demands; this data is often copied to secondary storage before use(Dell INSPIRON 1764 battery). It is primarily used for archival of rarely accessed information since it is much slower than secondary storage (e.g. 5–60 seconds vs. 1-10 milliseconds). This is primarily useful for extraordinarily large data stores, accessed without human operators. Typical examples include tape libraries and optical jukeboxes(Dell N3010 Battery).

When a computer needs to read information from the tertiary storage, it will first consult a catalog database to determine which tape or disc contains the information. Next, the computer will instruct a robotic arm to fetch the medium and place it in a drive(SONY VGP-BPS13/B Battery). When the computer has finished reading the information, the robotic arm will return the medium to its place in the library.

Off-line storage

Off-line storage is a computer data storage on a medium or a device that is not under the control of a processing unit(Sony VAIO VGN-FZ15T Battery). The medium is recorded, usually in a secondary or tertiary storage device, and then physically removed or disconnected. It must be inserted or connected by a human operator before a computer can access it again. Unlike tertiary storage, it cannot be accessed without human interaction(Sony VAIO VGN-FZ15G Battery).

Off-line storage is used to transfer information, since the detached medium can be easily physically transported. Additionally, in case a disaster, for example a fire, destroys the original data, a medium in a remote location will probably be unaffected, enabling disaster recovery(SONY VGP-BPS13A/S Battery). Off-line storage increases general information security, since it is physically inaccessible from a computer, and data confidentiality or integrity cannot be affected by computer-based attack techniques. Also, if the information stored for archival purposes is accessed seldom or never, off-line storage is less expensive than tertiary storage(SONY VGP-BPS13AS Battery).

In modern personal computers, most secondary and tertiary storage media are also used for off-line storage. Optical discs and flash memory devices are most popular, and to much lesser extent removable hard disk drives. In enterprise uses, magnetic tape is predominant. Older examples are floppy disks, Zip disks, or punched cards(SONY VGP-BPS13S Battery).

Characteristics of storage

Storage technologies at all levels of the storage hierarchy can be differentiated by evaluating certain core characteristics as well as measuring characteristics specific to a particular implementation(SONY VGP-BPS13B/S Battery). These core characteristics are volatility, mutability, accessibility, and addressibility. For any particular implementation of any storage technology, the characteristics worth measuring are capacity and performance(SONY VAIO PCG-5G2L battery).

Volatility

Non-volatile memory

Will retain the stored information even if it is not constantly supplied with electric power. It is suitable for long-term storage of information(SONY VAIO PCG-5G3L battery).

Volatile memory

Requires constant power to maintain the stored information. The fastest memory technologies of today are volatile ones (not a universal rule). Since primary storage is required to be very fast, it predominantly uses volatile memory(SONY VAIO PCG-5J1L battery).

Differentiation

Dynamic random access memory

A form of volatile memory which also requires the stored information to be periodically re-read and re-written, or refreshed, otherwise it would vanish(SONY VAIO PCG-5K2L battery).

Static memory

A form of volatile memory similar to DRAM with the exception that it never needs to be refreshed as long as power is applied. (It loses its content if power is removed) (SONY VAIO PCG-5L1L battery).

Mutability

Read/write storage or mutable storage

Allows information to be overwritten at any time. A computer without some amount of read/write storage for primary storage purposes would be useless for many tasks. Modern computers typically use read/write storage also for secondary storage(SONY VAIO PCG-5J2L battery).

Read only storage

Retains the information stored at the time of manufacture, and write once storage (Write Once Read Many) allows the information to be written only once at some point after manufacture. These are called immutable storage. Immutable storage is used for tertiary and off-line storage. Examples include CD-ROM and CD-R(SONY VAIO PCG-6S2L battery).

Slow write, fast read storage

Read/write storage which allows information to be overwritten multiple times, but with the write operation being much slower than the read operation. Examples include CD-RW and flash memory(SONY VAIO PCG-6S3L battery).

Accessibility

Random access

Any location in storage can be accessed at any moment in approximately the same amount of time. Such characteristic is well suited for primary and secondary storage(SONY VAIO PCG-6V1L battery).

Sequential access

The accessing of pieces of information will be in a serial order, one after the other; therefore the time to access a particular piece of information depends upon which piece of information was last accessed. Such characteristic is typical of off-line storage(SONY VAIO PCG-6W1L battery).

Addressability

Location-addressable

Each individually accessible unit of information in storage is selected with its numerical memory address. In modern computers, location-addressable storage usually limits to primary storage, accessed internally by computer programs, since location-addressability is very efficient, but burdensome for humans(SONY VAIO PCG-7111L battery).

File addressable

Information is divided into files of variable length, and a particular file is selected with human-readable directory and file names. The underlying device is still location-addressable(SONY VAIO PCG-6W3L battery), but the operating system of a computer provides the file system abstraction to make the operation more understandable. In modern computers, secondary, tertiary and off-line storage use file systems(SONY VAIO PCG-7113L battery).

Content-addressable

Each individually accessible unit of information is selected based on the basis of (part of) the contents stored there. Content-addressable storage can be implemented using software (computer program) or hardware (computer device), with hardware being faster but more expensive option(SONY VAIO PCG-7133L battery). Hardware content addressable memory is often used in a computer's CPU cache.

Capacity

Raw capacity

The total amount of stored information that a storage device or medium can hold. It is expressed as a quantity of bits or bytes (e.g. 10.4 megabytes) (SONY VAIO PCG-7Z1L battery).

Memory storage density

The compactness of stored information. It is the storage capacity of a medium divided with a unit of length, area or volume (e.g. 1.2 megabytes per square inch) (SONY VAIO PCG-7Z2L battery).

Performance

Latency

The time it takes to access a particular location in storage. The relevant unit of measurement is typically nanosecond for primary storage, millisecond for secondary storage, and second for tertiary storage. It may make sense to separate read latency and write latency, and in case of sequential access storage, minimum, maximum and average latency(SONY VAIO PCG-8Y1L battery)

Throughput

The rate at which information can be read from or written to the storage. In computer data storage, throughput is usually expressed in terms of megabytes per second or MB/s, though bit rate may also be used. As with latency, read rate and write rate may need to be differentiated. Also accessing media sequentially, as opposed to randomly, typically yields maximum throughput(SONY VAIO PCG-8Y2L battery).

Energy use

Storage devices that reduce fan usage, automatically shut-down during inactivity, and low power hard drives can reduce energy consumption 90 percent(SONY VAIO PCG-8Z2L battery).

2.5 inch hard disk drives often consume less power than larger ones. Low capacity solid-state drives have no moving parts and consume less power than hard disks. Also, memory may use more power than hard disks(SONY VAIO PCG-8Z1L battery).

Fundamental storage technologies

As of 2008, the most commonly used data storage technologies are semiconductor, magnetic, and optical, while paper still sees some limited usage. Some other fundamental storage technologies have also been used in the past or are proposed for development(SONY VAIO PCG-7112L battery).

Semiconductor

Semiconductor memory uses semiconductor-based integrated circuits to store information. A semiconductor memory chip may contain millions of tiny transistors or capacitors(SONY VAIO PCG-6W2L battery). Both volatile and non-volatile forms of semiconductor memory exist. In modern computers, primary storage almost exclusively consists of dynamic volatile semiconductor memory or dynamic random access memory. Since the turn of the century(SONY VAIO PCG-5K1L battery), a type of non-volatile semiconductor memory known as flash memory has steadily gained share as off-line storage for home computers. Non-volatile semiconductor memory is also used for secondary storage in various advanced electronic devices and specialized computers(SONY VGP-BPS13A/Q Battery).