Definition, History, Usage and Future of Computer Data Storage

Definition Defining electronic data storage, as the elaborations in this section will indicate, is no trivial task. A brief introduction would define it as any device which requires electrical power to record information. Computer data storage, distinct from electronic data storage, requires a computer system to read and manipulate the encoded data. Storage makes up one of the core components of a computer system along with the central processing unit, as defined in the von Neumann model which has been in use since the 1940s. Without storage ability, a computer becomes a signal processing device (e.g., a CD player). Encoded data may be stored as persistent or volatile memory (e.g., hard disk versus RAM), it may be mutable or read-only (e.g., hard disk versus WORM CD/DVD ; "write once, read many”). It may have the ability to access storage sequentially or variably (e.g., tape storage versus random access memory).