What is it about electronic and digital devices that allows them in their limited size to store such quantities of information? And data storage has evolved greatly over the last hundred and fifty years. Beginning with the record, to the cassette tape, moving on towards Compact Disc, onward to Hard Drives, Secure Digital Cards, MP3s, and Cloud.
1. The Record
Before the twenty century turned from the nineteenth century, music lovers were indulging in their favorite concertos and arias through the Phonograph. A great, round, black, plastic disc which expelled music from a large—what appeared to be—funnel. This device would consist of a needle moving over the disc, which had scratches or grooves on it to imitate the recorded sound. It was improved upon by other inventors to increase the quality of the vibrations. It was still greatly used to till the nineteen-eighties, even with the cassette tape making a debut.
2. Cassette Tape
Cassette Tapes, this old style of data storage was conceived of almost as early as the Phonograph; but that was a precursor to the popularly “80's” form of music storage. No less impressive than the LP, the cassette tape uses a magnetic strip of “tape” wrapped around two moveable spools inside a rectangular device.
When played in a playback cassette device it sends an electrical signal to what is called the recording head, that translates the data. Unknown to many persons born in or after the eighties, this device came into popularity in the 1970's, but soon lost that, along with the LP, when the Compact Disc made its debut in stores.
3. Compact Disc
The Compact Disc (CD) is still widely and popularly used for music listening, movie watching, and data storing. When it was released, the computers during that same era were inconsistent in their capacity to hold as much data. It was developed in the late seventies where the prototypes—which were the evolutionary beginning of the CD—were using lasers to read the first ever digitally stored information. Innovation helped the digital storage device to increase greater in its capacity to house information; though as it was king of the data storage systems at the time, it was soon surpassed by the computer Hard Disk Drive.
4. Hard Disk Drive
A Hard Disk Drive (HDD) is similar in two aspects of the former two devices; it uses magnetic material inside rapidly rotating disks, which retrieves digital information. But an HDD is much older than the well-known cassette tape and CD, being released for us in computers in the late 1950's. And stated before as being less in its capability to store large amounts of data, it has now ridiculously surpassed the CD by having a memory of 1 terabyte—which is equivalent to 1,000 gigabytes. The Hard Drive is known for its colossus of a storage device, but not its accessibility or mobility.
5. Secure Digital Cards
Primarily used in digital cameras or camera phones, the Secure Digital Card (SD Card) is known for its small size, yet large storage. The most commonly used of the SD Cards are normally no bigger than 4 gigabytes, though they can reach an extent of 2 terabytes. The amazing aspect of an SD Card is that it doesn't not require any moving parts to create or retrieve any information. Instead, it uses tiny cells which hold one bit of information each. Oddly, the SD Card has not had the popularity—or probably the financing—to replace the CD and Hard Disk Drive as the newest form of data storage. Like all innovations there is always something else, something better, something flashier which supersedes its technological cousin.
6. MP3
The digital era has brought about the end of material object to store information and is now using algorithms to compress the amount of information it would require without resulting in a lesser degree of quality. With this innovation came the device which to play it on; no bigger than a cellphone, and now almost a thin as a nickel, the MP3 player gave citizens the ability to listen to favored audio while capable of retaining it in their pockets without any mess of it intruding on their ability to use both hands. Yet, now all of these data storage devices are being toppled down from their hierarchy by the almighty Cloud.
7. Cloud
Though the Cloud still requires the aid of Hard Disk Drives so it may interface with the computer; and still it requires songs to come in MP3 form so it can store them, the Cloud is now just some logo which accompanies all Apple Products today. It can have a limitless amount of storage to which a person can “backup” their information of their computer, or Apple Product so as to retrieve it elsewhere, on a connected device—via iTunes account—and load it back to its original device.
Every generation has experienced a form of data storage. Whether it was the first being cave paintings, to paper, to the omniscient Cloud device. Popularity just implies that some innovation is being bought more than another. The LP and Cassette Tape are still valid forms of data storage, though they are usually used more as vintage for those who indulge living in the past. Technology will continue to evolve and amaze its users, and even its innovators and creators as data storage increases in capacity, accessibility, and mobility.
Author Bio:
The author of this article, Leo Preston, is a prominent technologist who have been writing articles on different technical issue for last two years. She unfold some unknown information in this article like how and where we can store data.
