Describe the attributes of storage media technology and mediation technology, respectively; then provide an example for each.

Answer: -

                   A storage media in a computer is a physical device that receives and stores electronic data for applications and users, as well as making the data retrievable. The storage medium could be located within a computer or other device, or it could be connected to a system externally, either directly or via a network. Storage media is the plural form of this phrase.

Computer paper tape with holes punched in it was an early form of storage media. Each hole represented a single bit of information. The hole would be interpreted by a paper tape reader and converted to a number. Punched cards were very popular in the early days of data storage, and they once held the majority of the world's digital data.

Magnetic tape, which later gave birth to magnetic floppy discs, replaced paper tape and punched cards. Solid-state drives (SSDs) and hard disc drives (HDDs) are presently the most used storage devices.

What is the function of storing media?
Computer storage media receive messages in the form of data from a host system via software commands. The type of medium required to store the data is determined by the commercial value of the data, any compliance rules, performance and availability requirements, and other variables.

A storage media can be either an inside device, such as a computer's SSD, or a removable device, such as an external hard drive or USB flash drive. Magnetic tape, compact discs (CDs), and non-volatile memory (NVM) cards are examples of additional forms of storage medium.

Storage in an organization is frequently divided into core and secondary categories. Primary storage originally referred to data held in memory for quick retrieval by a computer's processor, whereas secondary storage referred to data stored on non-volatile devices like SSDs and HDDs.
Any sort of memory that supports an organization's day-to-day workloads is now referred to as primary storage. Primary storage includes HDDs, SSDs, and storage-class memory (SCM) devices that store data for mission-critical applications. Secondary storage, on the other hand, can refer to anything that supports long-term data retention, such as optical discs or tape systems.
Automated software policies are used in tiered storage to shift data between multiple types of storage, such as HDDs, SSDs, and cloud platforms.

The phrase "storage medium" can apply to a whole storage device or a single component that is used in conjunction with or is a component of another system. Internal HDDs and SSDs in computers, as well as CDs, are usually referred to as storage media, while the CD drive is regarded as a storage device or system rather than a storage medium. An array, on the other hand, is a comprehensive storage system comprised of separate storage media. An array is frequently separated from the application server and connected to a secondary server over a network. An array can be made up of either HDDs or SSDs, or it can be set up in a hybrid format that combines HDDs and SSDs into a single system, with HDDs serving as a capacity tier for the quicker SSDs.

Depending on the workload, storage media can be organized in a variety of ways. The following are some well-known configurations:

RAID stands for redundant array of independent discs; NAS stands for network-attached storage, and SAN stands for storage area network (SAN).
These options don't have to be mutually exclusive. A SAN, for example, frequently configures storage into RAID configurations.

Various kinds of storage medium
There are many distinct types of storage medium, including:

Hard disc drives (HDDs)
An HDD is a high-capacity storage device that can replace magnetic storage media like tape or floppy discs. It has metal platters with a magnetic coating on them. When a computer is turned on, the platters normally spin constantly, recording data in distinct sectors on the magnetic disc.

Hard discs are still the most used storage medium for backup storage appliances, active archives, and long-term storage. Interfaces for replicating data copies, such as clones and snapshots, to tertiary devices or a hybrid cloud, may be included in a disk-based backup appliance.

The dependency on moving internal mechanisms such as actuators, motors, and spindles, which might malfunction and contaminate the disc, is a disadvantage of HDDs. However, due to their rising capacity and ability to rewrite data on the disc, HDDs remain popular in enterprise drive arrays. Western Digital Corp. released a 14 TB hard drive in 2017, making it the largest on the market at the time. In 2019, Seagate Technology released a 16 TB hard drive. Western Digital has responded with a 20 TB hard drive.

As an alternative to standard magnetic recording, certain HDDs use the shingled magnetic recording (SMR). By letting data to be written in partially overlapping tracks on the disc, the SMR technique provides for increased areal density. SMR drives perform best with data that is constantly written, such as disk-based archiving and backup, but they can degrade performance for other workloads.

SMR-based discs are made by companies including Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba. However, in 2020, the three companies were accused of selling HDDs without stating that they utilized SMR technology.

RAID

RAID stores data on many drives and distributes input/output (I/O) activities among them. Depending on the RAID setup, RAID can improve performance, fault tolerance, or both. If you set up RAID for fault tolerance, your data will be safe if one of your drives fails. Using numerous discs also lengthens the time between failures (MTBF).

Flash memory
Moving mechanical parts are not required for flash memory. Data is instead written to microchips, which allows for significantly faster storage than standard drives. Data, on the other hand, must be wiped and rebuilt in blocks, which might reduce a device's overall endurance.