Overview

When data is collected, it needs to be stored somewhere safe so it can be used later. There are two main ways to think about where data is stored – its logical location and its physical location.

A logical location is where the data seems to be stored from the user’s point of view. For example, saving files to the cloud means they are kept on remote servers that you can access through the internet.

A physical location is the actual hardware that stores the data. This could be inside your computer (internal storage) or on separate devices (external storage).

Internal storage includes things like your primary hard drive or a network drive. External storage could be a portable hard drive, SSD, USB stick, wireless drive, or network-attached storage (NAS).

Choosing the right storage depends on how much space you need, how fast you want to access the data, and how secure it must be.

You will be storing your work on storage devices throughout your course.