Data Storage Devices

Part I of Essay
Even before the first computer was conceptualized, data had already been stored on hard copy medium and used with a machine. As early as 1801, the punched card was used as a control device for mechanical looms. One and one-half centuries later, IBM joined punched cards to ....

Part II of Essay
.... in the various forms of magnetic tape from audiocassette to videocassette recorders. One of the first computer storage devices was the magnetic tape drive. Magnetic tape is a sequential data storage medium. To read data, a tape drive must wind through the spool of tape to the exact location of the desired information. To write, the tape drive encodes data sequentially on the tape. Because tape drives cannot randomly access or write data like disk drives, and are thus much slower, they have been replaced as the primary storage device with t ....