How Does a Computer Store Data?

Video Transcript

"Oh my god, I gotta find these things...Oh, hi today we're going to show you how a computer stores data. Well I know they have files so, it must be in here some where. What, how does a computer store data? Well, it's quite complicated. It's through the storage on a secondary recording media of archival data mass. Now, look it's not quite that easy but it's not quite that complicated either. There's several ways that a computer can store data, all on what we call media. The trusty old floppy disc, tapes, CD, DVD, the hard drive. CD and DVD drives use lasers to write on to the mirrored surface. Now the thing that the floppy drive and the tapes and the hard drive have in common is that they store information magnetically. The hard drive discs spin around and the little heads right here go across the surface of the disc and write magnetically. The hard disc platter is divided in to tracks. These tracks are then divided in to pie shaped sections called sectors. Each of the sectors is then divided in to blocks. Now you might have noticed in the hard drive that we looked at, it had more than one platter. In side the hard drive we have file folders. Inside each of those file folders are files. The hard drive can contain many folders, as many as you want to make until you run out of room. We have software and documents. There's the operating system or the system software and there are applications or the programs. The last kind of files that we have on a computer are documents. Those are the things that you actually make with the software program. But don't take my word for it. Hey, read the flippen manual."