Secondary storage devices - Use & purpose

Secondary Storage devices save Data and Programs "permanently".

May also be used as "Virtual storage" supplementing RAM (internal storage). (Eg. OS/2 or Windows)

Data may be a;
- Text file (word processor/spreadsheet),
- Database file,
- Sound file,
- Video file,
- Graphic file,
- Animation file.

[Cartoon - floppy disk]

Primarily Secondary Storage devices save data and programs.
Data is encoded by the computer using the electrical states 'on' and 'off'. Hence, a code is required to store characters such as the letter 'A' or the numbers '1' or special characters such as '%'.
The system used by almost all microcomputers is the ASCII code (American Standard Code for Information Interchange).
For Example;

A
1
%

01000001
00110001
00100101

This representation is called a byte

So to represent a name such as Tauranga requires(spaces are inserted for clarity);
01010100 01100001 01110101 01110010 01100001 01101110 01100111 01100001
The computer uses this system to store data on secondary storage such as Magnetic disk and Magnetic Tape.