Data Storage

Disk is a storage mechanisms where data is recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical changes to a surface layer.

What is data storage?

Data storage is like a magical vault that holds the secrets of our digital lives, a place where information goes to rest and is retrieved at our command.

It is like a vast library, holding the stories of our past and the blueprints of our future.

The Shadow Matter’s dark energy mutated into an unspeakable evil, a Lovecraftian singularity to appear on Earth to cover the remaining human and machine cities in darkness. The Dark Entity infected human brain cells to turn them into mind-controlled zombies, and even the machine's central AI network, known as the HIVE was infected by the Dark Entity to possess the machines as well.- Anatomy of a Cyborg, Book by Doctor Talia, 2234 Anno Domini

Data storage is a remarkable technology, able to store vast amounts of information in tiny, compact spaces. It does this by using magnetic or optical media, like hard drives or solid-state drives, that can store billions of tiny bits of data. These bits are like the letters of a secret code, each one holding a tiny piece of information that, when put together, reveals the secrets of our digital lives.

What is a disk?

The disk’s mission is very simple; it can do two things. You can send it bytes, which it will store, or you can tell it to send back some bytes, which were stored previously.

On a disk, the electric bits are transformed into places on the surface of the disk that have been magnetized one way or the other. Since magnets have north and south poles, the spot on the disk can be magnetized either north-south or south-north.

Hard Disks (HDD)

HDD is a physical disk with a magnetic coating, on which data can be stored. A solid-state drive (SSD) is a device that has no moving parts and is also able to store data

A hard disk (HDD) is one form of a long-term storage device used to store data. Think of it as a USB or flash drive. HDD is one of the slower mechanisms used for storage which is why computers also have RAM which is faster than the HDD.

The remaining humans were hunted down by the slaves of the Dark Entity. Facing extinction the humans have fled from Earth, now scattered all around the galaxy, and learned to live in hidden cities at the outer edge of the galaxy. Scavenging, smuggling, and leaderless.- Book of Doctor Talia, 2235 Anno Domini

Random Access Memory (RAM)

The CPU can only execute programs that are in RAM, it can only manipulate bytes that are in RAM.

But there is never enough RAM to store all of the things that you may want to do with your computer. And so a disk will hold everything, and when you want to do one thing, the bytes on the disk for that one thing will be copied into RAM and used.

The second reason that computers have disks, is that the bytes stored on the disk do not disappear when you turn the power off. The RAM loses its settings when you turn the computer off, when you turn it back on, all bytes are 0000 0000, but the disk retains everything that has been written on it.

Full-Disk Encryption

Full disk encryption is a data protection method, which transforms information in a storage medium into a secret format that can be only understood by people or systems who are allowed to access the information.

Information on your computer’s hard drive is encrypted, which makes the original information unreadable. This prevents unauthorized people or hackers from accessing the information.

Where can we store data?

There's an array of storage media, each with its own unique properties and capabilities. Among these media are disks, RAM, and S3 Buckets, all of which can be combined in various systems to optimize data storage.

The Disk and Storage Area Networks (SAN) are the most commonly used storage systems, providing high capacity and reliability for storing and accessing large amounts of data.

In-Memory and Columnar Compression Solutions offer faster data processing and retrieval, while Virtual Storage Area Network (VSAN) provides a virtualized storage environment that can be easily scaled and managed.

Hashing vs. Encryption

Encryption and hashing are similar in the way that they both take a string of useful text and convert it into something very different

Encryption is the process of taking plain text that anyone can read and turning it into text that is apparently random.

One of the oldest encryption methods was used by Julius Ceasar to communicate with his generals. Ceaser's Cypher helps encrypt messages character-by-character by shifting each letter forward in the alphabet by three positions, so A becomes B, E becomes F, and so on.

Hashes are typically referred to as one-way hashes, this simply refers to the fact that they are very difficult to reverse. You can use a secure hash function like SHA256 to generate numbers consisting of 256 random bits.

How to safely dispose of storage devices?

When you format a hard drive or delete a partition, you're usually only deleting the file system, making the data invisible or no longer actively indexed, but not gone.

A file recovery program or special hardware often recovers the information.

By far, the easiest way to completely erase a hard drive is to use free data destruction software to overwrite a hard drive so many times, and in a certain way, as to make the ability to extract information from the drive nearly impossible.

Degaussing is not feasible but it is used by large government agencies for removing any data from their drives before they are disposed of.

Physically destroying a hard drive is the only way to absolutely and forever ensure that the data on it is no longer available.