Secondary Storage

File Compression

File compression or source coding is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than an unencoded representation would use, through use of specific encoding schemes. This is useful because it helps to reduce the consumption of expensive resources, such as hard disk space or transmission bandwidth.

Head Crash

A head crash is a hard-disk failure that occurs when a read–write head of a hard disk drive comes in contact with its rotating platter. This resulting in permanent and usually causes damage to the magnetic media on the platter surface.

Internet Hard Drive

The main purpose of an Internet hard drive is to offer a means of accessing your computer files such as pictures, documents, music, videos, etc. from any computer, as long as that computer has access to the Internet. Similar to depositing money into your bank account. An Internet hard drive will allow you to "deposit" your computer files into a remote hard drive, and then later access those very same files from any other computer.

Optical Disc Drive

An optical disc drive is a disk drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves near the light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs.

Solid-state Storage

Solid-state storage is a nonvolatile, removable storage medium that employs integrated circuits rather than magnetic or optical media. It is the equivalent of large-capacity, nonvolatile memory. Examples include flash memory USB devices and various proprietary removable packages intended to replace external hard drives.

Input and Output

Ergonomic Keyboard

A "fixed-split keyboard" is a single board, with the keys separated into two or three groups, allowing the user to type at a different angle than the typical straight keyboard.

Ink-jet Printer

An inkjet printer is a type of printer that creates a digital image by propelling variable-sized droplets of ink onto paper. Inkjet printers are the most commonly used type of printer. It is range from small inexpensive consumer models to very large professional machines.

Laser Printer

A laser printer is a common type of printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper. As with digital photocopiers and multifunction printers, laser printers employ a xerographic printing process but differ from analog photocopiers in that the image is produced by the direct scanning of a laser beam across the printer's photoreceptor.

Magnetic-ink Character Reader (MICR)

Magnetic Ink Character Recognition, or MICR, is a character recognition technology used primarily by the banking industry to facilitate the processing of cheques. The technology allows computers to read information such as account numbers off of printed documents. Unlike barcodes, MICR codes can be easily read by humans.

Optical-character Recognition (OCR)

Optical character recognition, or OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping system in an office, or to publish the text on a website.

Optical-mark Recognition (OMR)

Optical Mark Recognition is also called Optical Mark Reading and OMR, is the process of capturing human-marked data from document forms such as surveys and tests.

The System Unit

Flash Memory

Flash memory is a non-volatile computer storage chip that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It is primarily used in memory cards, USB flash drives, MP3 players and solid-state drives for general storage and transfer of data between computers.

Graphic Cards

A graphics card is a piece of hardware installed in a computer that is for rendering the image on the computer’s monitor. Graphics cards come in many varieties with varying features.

Sound Cards

A sound card or also known as an audio card is a computer expansion card. It is use to facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs.

Network Interface Card (NIC)

A network interface controller is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network. The controller may also known as a network adapter.

Plug n Play

is a term used to describe the characteristic of a USB, or device specification, which facilitates the discovery of a hardware component in a system, without the need for physical device configuration. Plug and play refers to both the boot-time assignment of device resources, and to hotplug systems such as USB and Firewire.

Bus line

Device on a computer's motherboard that provides a data path between the CPU and attached devices such as keyboard, mouse, disk drives, video cards, etc.

HDMI

HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) is a compact audio and video interface for transmitting uncompressed digital data.

Cache Memory

Cache memory is an extremely fast memory that is built into a computer’s CPU. The CPU uses cache memory to store instructions that are repeatedly required to run programs. It also improves overall system speed. The advantage of cache memory is that the CPU does not have to use the motherboard’s system bus for data transfer.