mass storage
Permanent peripheral storage such as disks and tapes. Contrast with "temporary memory." The "mass" is used for emphasis, as "storage" is sufficient. At one time, it meant very large storage; however, the term is also used to refer to USB drives, which have very small capacities compared to disk. See 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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