Fast Guide to Storage Technologies
This printable page provides a fast guide in table form to storage technologies. To the extent that some technologies depend on other technologies (for example, a storage area network depends on either Fibre Channel or iSCSI for its connection protocol), there is a certain amount of redundancy among some table entries.
Object Storage -- Click here to learn more about this emerging storage technology
Technology
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Advantages |
Limitations |
Applications |
Compact disc, recordable ( CD-R ) or rewritable ( CD-RW ) and DVD |
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Technology
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Advantages |
Limitations |
Applications |
Diskettes, 1.44 MB |
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Technology
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Advantages |
Limitations |
Applications |
Hard drive, external |
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Technology
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Advantages |
Limitations |
Applications |
Hard drive, internal |
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Technology
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Advantages |
Limitations |
Applications |
Removable storage (ZIP disks, JAZ disks, etc.) |
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Technology
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Advantages |
Limitations |
Applications |
Solid-state storage (USB devices, flash memory, smart cards, etc.) |
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Technology
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Advantages |
Limitations |
Applications |
Direct-attached storage (DAS) |
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Technology
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Advantages |
Limitations |
Applications |
Disk library |
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Technology
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Advantages |
Limitations |
Applications |
Disk-to-disk-to-tape ( D2D2T ) |
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Technology
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Advantages |
Limitations |
Applications |
Fibre Channel (See Storage area network below) |
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Technology
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Advantages |
Limitations |
Applications |
iSCSI (See Storage area network below) |
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Technology
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Advantages |
Limitations |
Applications |
Magnetic tape |
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Technology
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Advantages |
Limitations |
Applications |
Network-attached storage (NAS) |
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Technology
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Advantages |
Limitations |
Applications |
Redundant array of independent disks (RAID) |
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Technology
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Advantages |
Limitations |
Applications |
Storage area network (SAN) |
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