A storage device is any computing hardware that is used for storing, porting and

extracting data files and objects. It can hold and store information both temporarily and
permanently, and can be internal or external to a computer, server or any similar
computing device.
A storage device may also be known as a storage medium or storage media.
Storage devices are one of the core components of any computing device. They store
virtually all the data and applications on a computer, except hardware firmware. They
are available in different form factors depending on the type of underlying device. For
example, a standard computer has multiple storage devices including RAM, cache, and
hard disk, as well as possibly having optical disk drives and externally connected USB
drives.
There are two different types of storage devices:

 Primary storage devices: Generally smaller in size, these are designed to hold
data temporarily and are internal to the computer. They have the fastest data
access speed, and include RAM and cache memory.
 Secondary storage devices: These usually have large storage capacity, and they
store data permanently. They can be either internal or external to the computer,
and they include the hard disk, optical disk drive and USB storage device.

Different Types of Computer Storage Devices

Modern computers have dedicated RAM for running programs, and large volume storage to record
program outputs and to store data when not in use. Large volume storage trades access speed for
capacity; and it comes in three broad categories; internal to the computer, external to the computer and
storage that is accessed via a network.

Internal storage is a device housed inside the computer. It comes in two broad types, as of 2014;
spinning disk hard disk drives and solid state hard drives. Spinning disk drives have platters of magnetic
material that get written and rewritten by a drive head. Solid state disks use flash memory to store data.
Solid state disk drives are much faster than spinning platters, and can fit unusual case shapes, like the
MacBook Air or Ultrabook, for example. Solid state drives are much more expensive for a given capacity
than a conventional spinning disk drive.

External storage devices include removable media like optical disks and SD Cards and USB-connected
flash drives (called "thumb drives" because of their size) and externally connected hard drives. External
storage is used to back up computer data, move files between a computer and a different machine
without a network, and make copies of something for other users. As of mid-2014, optical disks are on
the way out in consumer devices, external hard drives are used for backing up systems, and thumb
drives are used for most conventional file transfers.

Networked storage devices included shared file servers, network accessible storage (NAS) devices and
cloud services. All of these take the idea of an external hard drive and change the connection method
from USB to a full network connection. You add file servers to your local domain and have total control
over who accesses which files on your server. You can plug an NAS device to your router and every
computer on your local network can store files on it for a more informal file sharing method. You can
also use services like DropBox, Box and SkyDrive to put files up on another vendor's servers and access
them through the Internet.