6.3 Storage

Storage and memory devices are key hardware components that are vital in multimedia development.

There are different types of storage devices which are discussed next.

Hard Disk

A hard disk (see Figure 6.7)stores a large amount of data on a platter-like shape which has a 'head' or 'pointer'

that effectively points to the storage space the piece of data is stored at.

Another storage component which is connected to the hard disk is the disk cache.

The disk cache's purpose is to speed up the reading and writing to and from the hard disk.

It does this by taking some of the stored data on the hard disk and placing it temporally in its memory for

quicker retrieval.

6.3 Storage

CD-ROM

Compact Disk-ROM (see Figure 6.8) is a pressed disk that has accessible data on it for the computer

system to read.

For the computer system to be able to write to the CD-ROM, a CD-RW drive should be in place to allow

multimedia to be written on the CD-ROM.

The CD-ROM was a major source of multimedia in the 1990s but is now being overtaken by the World Wide

Web which provides vast quantities of multimedia online.

Similarly, the CD-ROM superseded the floppy disk which was also used a storage device for multimedia.

DVDs and Blu-ray are also currently used and provide more storage capacity than CDs