Computers and document storage
When the personal computer first became affordable on the open market in the early 1980s, progammes were stored on tape and had to be loaded up each time the computer was switched on. Rapid advances were made and before long, document storage and file storage onto hard disks and floppy disks became the norm. A hard disk is installed into the computer’s base unit or tower. They are capable of storing massive amounts of data depending upon their size. The first floppy disks were five and a quarter inches square and were inserted into a floppy disk drive in the personal computer’s base unit. A few years later, their size was reduced to three and a half inches.
Both sizes of disk were useful because of their portability but a limited amount of document storage was possible. The three and a half inch floppy disk, for example, only holds 1.4Mb of data. For a while zip-drives became popular for document or file storage since they had a higher capacity than their only slightly smaller counterparts, the three and a half inch floppies. Typically they had a capacity of up to 250Mb.
Both are now being replaced by either CD or DVD, more portable and capable of storing a much increased amount of data. Nowadays people are carrying even more data around on their key-rings. The USB pen, which is effectively another hard-drive that simply plugs into the USB port on the computer tower, is a remarkable device and who knows what will be next in the area of digital technology.
Tags: archive storage, cd and dvd storage, document archiving, office document storage