Memory and Storage

Bits, Bytes, K, Meg, Gig ...
- The primary unit of storage in a computer is a bit.
  - This stands for Binary digIT
  - and is either a 0 or a 1.
  - But we don't use this measure very often
  - because it is too small.
  - But combinations of bits add up quickly.
  - Example naming students with a bit, or a bit pattern.
- A collection of 8 bits is a BYTE
  - For most things, this is the basic unit of measurement.
  - Memory, disk space, file sizes ...
  - But it takes a bunch of bytes to do anything, so we group them as well
- K, M, G ,T
  - SI Units,
    - International System of Units
    - We are mostly interested in the prefixes
  - Kilo - Greek for thousand, normally 10³ or 1000
    - For memory we use the term for 2¹⁰ or 1024
    - So 1 kilobyte, or 1KB is 1024 bytes, or 8x1024 bits
    - Many Word documents, and excel spreadsheets are on the order of 10s to 100s of KB.
    - The the label K has become a standard abbreviation for 1,000 in our world
      - Salaries for example.
  - Mega - Greek for mighty, normally 10⁶ or 1,000,000 (a million)
    - When measuring memory, we use the term to refer to 2²⁰ or 1,048,576
    - So 1 megabyte, or 1MB is 1,048,576 bytes 8x 1,048,576 bits.
    - CDs can hold around 600 MB
    - Most PowerPoint presentations are between 100s of KB to 10s of MB
    - Pictures are in the 1MB to 10MB range.
  - Giga - Greek for giant, normally 10⁹ or 1,000,000,000
    - When measuring memory, we use the term to refer to 2³⁰ or 1,073,741,824
    - We measure disk space in gigabytes (GB)
      - Most computers today have at least 4GB to 12GB of main memory
      - Today most new computers have between 500GB + of hard drive space.
      - DVD disks can hold up 17GB
      - USB drives are in the 8GB+ range
      - Music players range from 4GB to 80GB
      - And phones, and tablets, and ...
  - Tera - Greek for monster.
    - 10¹² in SI units.
    - 2⁴⁰ in binary.
    - Terabyte hard drives have become standard.
    - Four years ago, this was the last category discussed!
  - Peta - Greek for five
    - The prefix was adopted in 1975
    - 10¹⁵ in SI units.
    - 2⁵⁰ in binary.
    - This unit is unfathomable to me
    - one quadrillion = 1,000,000,000,000,000
    - But wikipedia has the following fun facts
      - Google processed 24 petabytes of data per day in 2009
      - In 2011 an IBM computer had 120 PB of storage.
      - Cray is building one with 500 PB of storage
      - Avatar used over 1PB of storage for rendering
      - It is estimated that Facebook had 357 PB of images as of Jan 2013
      - It is estimated that the human brain's ability to store memories is equivalent to about 2.5 petabytes of binary data
  - There are other measurements, (exa, zeta , yotta)
    - They are in use now, and will drop to the pc world in most of our life time.
    - Here is a somewhat older, but interesting article about storage.
Examples from Sunday's Paper.
- From Best Buy
Media for class:
- If you plan to work exclusively on campus, you can use your university disk space to store work for this class.
  - You have 150MB of disk storage on the campus "S" drive.
  - This is easily accessible from campus machines.
  - There is some information available on accessing your "S" drive on the Tech and Comm Knowldegebase
    - Log on to my.edinboro.edu
    - Select TechHelp
    - Search for campus network storage
    - Select either the on campus or off campus article.
- If you plan to work at home, you will need to store your work on removable media.
- Your media choices
  - USB drive - you would need one of these.
    - + They come in a variety of sizes
    - + They are GREAT
    - +/- they are moderately priced.
  - USB drive (Desktop)
    - These are much larger (500GB - 3Tb)
    - Bulky and harder to work with.
    - Probably not what you need for this class.
Cloud Storage
- Cloud Storage has become a viable options
- google drive,
- dropbox
- one drive
- Far too many to mention.
- I use dropbox,
- but one drive has some advantages
  - It is Microsoft's Product
  - So it is integrated with Microsoft's Products
  - And they give you 15GB of storage
  - You can access this from anywhere, even through a web browser
  - You can use this with Microsoft's Office Online
- You need to sign up for a free account.
- Then log into your account when you start an office product.
If you are going to work in the lab, you don't need to get media.
The media you need to buy will depend on what you want to do and what computing resources you will use. If you are confused, please see me or the lab assistant.
I will most likely use one drive, just to see.