Mass Storage Device

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What Does Mass Storage Device Mean?

A mass storage device (MSD) is any storage device that makes it possible to store and port large amounts of data across computers, servers and within an IT environment. MSDs are portable storage media that provide a storage interface that can be both internal and external to the computer.

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A mass storage device may also be referred to as an auxiliary storage device. The term is commonly used to describe USB mass storage devices.

Techopedia Explains Mass Storage Device

MSD is primarily related to storage devices that provide consistent and permanent storage capacity. MSD is connected to the computer/server via a data transfer interface, such as SCSI, USB or even Ethernet (for storage area networks). Some of the common MSDs include floppy disk drives, optical drives, hard disk drives, tape drives, external hard drives, RAID and USB storage devices. Currently, typical MSD devices provide anywhere from a few gigabytes to petabytes of data. Internal MSDs generally can’t be removed, whereas external MSDs can be easily removed, ported and plugged into another computer.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist
Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ??a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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