In the 1950s, the unreliable vacuum tubes were replaced by transistors to reduce power consumption of the computer. Initially, the processors were composed of individual transistors. Over the years, but they brought more and more transistor functions under on integrated circuits (ICs). The increasing integration of more and more transistor and gate functions on a chip led drastically reduced use of transistors.
Hard drives are mass storage devices consisting of metal discs enclosed in a shielded enclosure. The information is stored on magnetic disk surfaces. This is a type of mass storage capacity still widely used in our computers. Innovative materials are emerging (flash mass storage media, called Solid State Drives, or holographic media).
Similar to hard drives, floppy disks are mass storage consisting of a flexible pouch protected by a plastic magnetic disk surfaces. The disks were widely used until the 1990s. The use of tapes as mass storage devices has been practiced since 1950. DAT, DLT or LTO are tape formats. These can only be read in a particular order and are commonly used to make backup copies of hard disks.
The CD and DVD are optical storage media. Discs are equipped with a reflecting surface. The information is stored in the form of microscopic spots and read by the reflection of a laser beam. The first CDs were built in 1980 and the first DVD in 1995. Unlike hard disks, changes to the information stored on these media is limited or impossible (ROMs). They are used mainly for long-term storage of computer data.
A USB stick is a housing equipped with a flash memory, an electronic component and a connector conforming to the USB standard. The first USB flash drives were built in the early 2000s. USB drives can be used in the same way as magnetic disks as a support for data transfer of long-term storage, which can be handled by Computer Repairs in Sydney.
