Properties of Optical Storage
Computer Science: OCR A Level, topic 1.3.7
Properties of Optical Media
Optical media provides cheap and robust secondary storage.
Low cost
- Optical media is very cheap per-gigabyte (GB).
Great reliability
- Optical media is:
- Waterproof.
- Shockproof.
- This makes it ideal for portability (transporting).
Low capacity
- Each disk has a low capacity.
- Disks are small and fairly cheap. So it can be easy to gain a high capacity of storage by buying multiple disks.
Low speed
- Because the parts in the optical media drive have to move to find the right bit of data on the disk, access times can be quite slow.
- Writing to a disk can also be a very slow process.
Test yourself on Properties of Optical Storage
Does optical media tend to be cheap or expensive on a per-GB basis?
What is the most important factor that allows optical media to be transported?
Is it generally quicker to write data or read data on optical media?
I live in an area prone to flooding and need to make a backup of important files. Should I make a backup using magnetic, solid state, or optical media?