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Optical Storage Mediums - Online Term Papers

Optical Storage Mediums

The most common way of storing data in a computer is magnetic. We have hard
drives and floppy disks (soon making way to the CD-ROM), both of which can store
some amount of data. In a disk drive, a read/write head (usually a coil of
wire) passes over a spinning disk, generating an electrical current, which
defines a bit as either a 1 or a 0. There are limitations to this though, and
that is that we can only make the head so small, and the tracks and sectors so
close, before the drive starts to suffer from interference from nearby tracks
and sectors. What other option do we have to store massive amount of data? We
can use light. Light has its advantages. It is of a short wavelength, so ...

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touch the disk surface, thereby not creating
friction, which leads to wear, so the life of an average optical disk is far
longer than that of a magnetic medium. Also, it is impossible to ÒcrashÓ an
optical disk (in the same sense as crashing a hard drive), since there is a
protective layer covering the data areas, and that the ÒheadÓ of the drive can
be quite far away from the disk surface (a few millimeters compared to
micrometers for a hard drive). If this medium is so superior, then why is it
not standard equipment? It is. Most of the new computers have a CD-ROM drive
that comes with it. Also, it is only recently that prices have come low enough
to actually make them affordable. However, as the acronym states, one cannot
write to a CD-ROM disk (unless one gets a CD-Recordable disk and drive). There
are products however, that allows one to store and retrieve data on a optical
medium. Some of those products are shown in table 1. However, the cost of this
is quite high, ...

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Optical Storage Mediums. (2006, April 15). Retrieved January 11, 2026, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Optical-Storage-Mediums/44442

"Optical Storage Mediums." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 15 Apr. 2006. Web. 11 Jan. 2026. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Optical-Storage-Mediums/44442>

"Optical Storage Mediums." Essayworld.com. April 15, 2006. Accessed January 11, 2026. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Optical-Storage-Mediums/44442.

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 4/15/2006 01:54:58 PM
Category: Computers
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 997
Pages: 4

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