Computer storage refers to
the data stored in an electromagnetic form to be used by the processor. You can
measure the amount of data stored on a computer just as you can measure the
amount of ater in container, although measurement units are different, of
course. The storage capacity defines the amount of data that can be stored on a
storage device.
Computer Data
A computer stores a
variety of data and information in its memory,including numbers (0-9), letters
(A-Z) and symbols and other characters (#,{},. ‘ ~ ^). A computer uses the binary
system to represent these characters. In a binary system, only two digits, 0
and 1, are used. The 0s and 1s in the binary system are known as bits (binary
digits). A bit is the smallest unit of measurement of storage capacity. A set
of eight bits is called a byte.
NOTE
Kilobytes, megabytes,
gigabytes, terabytes are higher units
for mrasureing the capacity of a storage of a storage device.
8 bits = 1 byte
1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte(KB)
1024 KB = 1 megabyte (MB)
1024 MB = 1 gigabyte (GB)
1024 GB = 1 terabyte (TB)
Internet S
torage
Computers use two types of
storage: external storage and internal storage. External storage is explained
in the next section. The internal storage, also called primary storage is the
main memory. It stores data and instructions for processing .it also stores the
output data temporarily before it is sent to an appropriate output device. The
act of retrieving existintg data from memory is called reading out or simiply
reading. The process of storing data in memory is called reading in or writing.
There are two types of
internet storage:
1. Random Access Memory
(RAM)
2. Read Only Memory (ROM).
