Digital storage

We live in a digital world. As a consequence, there are multiple ways of storing all of our digital data.

The two most common ways of storing data these days are HDD (hard disk drives) and flash drives (solid state media).

Hard disk drives (HDD) store data on magnetic platters that are written to and read from using a magnetic read/write head.

HDDs can store and access large quantities of data quickly. HDDs are the type of storage device found in most computers. They typically have a storage capacity of 500MB - 2 terabytes They are also the type of storage device that are used in RAIDS.

A RAID is a redundant array of independent disks. It is essentially a large cabinet holding multiple HDDS. RAIDS can store multiple terabytes of information. The huge data centers operated by Google, Amazon, and Apple are filled with thousands of RAIDS. (check out this video).

Solid-state flash memory stores data has an electrical charge in a solid-state capacitor. Flash memory is very robust, is not susceptible to magnetic charges, and is becoming cheaper and cheaper every day. Flash memory is used in memory sticks, memory cards, and is now being used as on-board memory in some home and laptop computers. These are called solid-state drives (SSD). The new small point of care hand-held ultrasound systems will very likely also be using flash memory for data storage.