mass storage
Permanent peripheral storage, which is typically the hard disk drive. However, the term may also refer to tape drives and USB drives. The "mass" is an older reference to "large" capacity; however, USB drives are small, compared to hard disks.The only relevant meaning today is that "mass storage" means permanent storage in contrast with "RAM" or "main memory," which is the computer's temporary workspace (see memory). The exception is flash memory (USB drives), which is non-volatile memory that "does" remember, and the industry is also developing similar products (see future memory chips). See flash memory, USB drive, magnetic disk, optical disc and magnetic tape.
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| Mass Storage on a Deck of Cards |
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| In the 1960s, a roomful of these Card Random Access Memory (CRAM) units provided 176 megabytes of direct access mass storage, a huge capacity for that era. See CRAM for more details. (Image courtesy of NCR Corporation.) |
mass storage [′mas ′stȯr·ij]
(computer science)
A computer storage with large capacity, especially one whose contents are directly accessible to a computer's central processing unit.
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