1. Explain the difference between primary and secondary storage. 2. Describe three ways in which RAM differs to ROM.

3. Explain how a hard disk drive reads and writes data.

4. What enables the blu-ray to store more data than a compac disc?

5. A company sends out an electronic catalogue its customers. Suggest a suitable storage
medium and justify your choice with reasons.

6. A 16-bit colour image is 4 inches x 1 inch in size, with a resolution of 600 dots per inch.
Calculate the storage requirements for this image.

7. Explain why data on a magnetic tape may be accessed quickly or slowly.

8. Explain two reasons why solid-state storage is not as common in desktop PCs and laptops as
hard disk drives.

Memory is very much like our brain as it is used to store data and instructions. Computer memory is the storage space where data is to be processed, and instructions needed for processing are stored. The memory is divided into a large number of smaller portions called the cell. Every cell/ location has a unique address and a size.

Two types of memories are:

Primary Memory

Secondary Memory

In this tutorial, we will differentiate between Primary and Secondary memory, and learn:

What is Memory?

What is Primary Memory?

RAM (Random Access Memory)

ROM (Read Only Memory)

What is Secondary Memory?

Types of Secondary memory

Characteristic of Primary Memory

Characteristic Secondary Memory

Primary Memory Vs Secondary Memory

What is Primary Memory?

Primary Memory is the main memory of the computer system. Accessing data from primary memory is faster because it is an internal memory of the computer. The primary memory is most volatile, meaning data in primary memory does not exist if it is not saved when a power failure occurs.

The primary memory is a semiconductor memory. It is costlier compared with secondary memory. The capacity of primary memory is very much limited and is always smaller compares to secondary memory.

Two types of Primary Memory are:

RAM

ROM