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Punch Cards
Punched cards were widely used through much of the 20th century in the data processing industry, where specialized and increasingly complex unit record machines, organized into semiautomatic data processing systems, used punched cards for data input, output, and storage. The IBM 12-row/80-column punched card format came to dominate the industry. Many early digital computers used punched cards as the primary medium for input of both computer programs and data. -
Phonograph Records
A phonograph record, often simply record, is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc. At first, the discs were commonly made from shellac; starting in the 1940s polyvinyl chloride became common. In the mid-2000s, gradually, records made of any material began to be called vinyl records, or simply vinyl. -
Magnetic Tape
Magnetic tape data storage is a system for storing digital information on magnetic tape using digital recording. Initially, large open reels were the most common format, but modern magnetic tape is most commonly packaged in cartridges and cassettes - such as the widely supported Linear Tape-Open. The device that performs the writing or reading of data is called a tape drive, and autoloaders and tape libraries are often used to automate cartridge handling. -
Cassette Tape
The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the cassette tape or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. It was developed by Philips in Hasselt, Belgium, and introduced in September 1963. Compact Cassettes come in two forms, either already containing content as a prerecorded cassette (Musicassette), or as a fully recordable "blank" cassette. Both forms are reversible by the user. -
Removable Hard Drive
The IBM 1311 contained 6 disks and could hold 2.6MB of data. In 1964, the IBM 2311 was the first standardized disk drive, which could be used across multiple versions of the System/360 computer. -
Punch Tape
Punched tape is a form of data storage that consists of a long strip of paper in which holes are punched. Now effectively obsolete, it was widely used during much of the 20th century for teleprinter communication, for input to computers of the 1950s and 1960s, and later as a storage medium for minicomputers and CNC machine tools. -
8-Track Tape
The 8-track tape (formally Stereo 8; commonly known as the eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, or simply eight-track) is a magnetic tape sound-recording technology that was popular in the United States from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when the Compact Cassette format took over. The format is regarded as an obsolete technology, and was relatively unknown outside the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, West Germany, Italy and Japan. -
Floppy Disk
A floppy disk is a type of disk storage composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic enclosure lined with fabric that removes dust particles. Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive. -
VHS
VHS (short for Video Home System) is a standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes. Developed by Victor Company of Japan (JVC) in the early 1970s, it was released in Japan on September 9, 1976, and in the United States on August 23, 1977.[citation needed] -
CD
Compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony and released in 1982. The format was originally developed to store and play only sound recordings (CD-DA). The first commercially available audio CD player, the Sony CDP-101, was released October 1982 in Japan. -
SSD
A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the hierarchy of computer storage. It is also sometimes called a solid-state device or a solid-state disk, although SSDs lack the physical spinning disks and movable read-write heads used in hard drives or floppy disks. -
Zip Drive
The Zip drive is a removable floppy disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities of 100 MB, then 250 MB, and then 750 MB. -
SD Cards
Secure Digital is a proprietary non-volatile memory card format developed by the SD Card Association for use in portable devices. The standard was introduced in August 1999 by joint efforts between SanDisk, Panasonic and Toshiba as an improvement over MultiMediaCards and has become the industry standard. The three companies formed SD-3C, LLC, a company that licenses and enforces intellectual property rights associated with SD memory cards and SD host and ancillary products. -
USB Flash Drive
A USB flash drive is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than 30 g (1 oz). Since first appearing on the market in late 2000, as with virtually all other computer memory devices, storage capacities have risen while prices have dropped -
The Cloud
Cloud storage is a model of computer data storage in which the digital data is stored in logical pools. The physical storage spans multiple servers and the physical environment is typically owned and managed by a hosting company. These cloud storage providers are responsible for keeping the data available and accessible, and the physical environment protected and running.
