So I might be overthinking it, but I understand that machines store information in certain locations on a drive but how exactly does it work? Like how can a usb drive store thousands of songs?
Edit: just to be clear I mean how does it physically work
In: Technology
Physically speaking, we use [floating gate transistors](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nahid_Hossain/publication/280878435/figure/fig1/AS:284450303823888@1444829645690/Schematic-diagram-of-a-floating-gate-transistor.png) to either store electrons in the floating gate (which means a 1) or to not (0).
A transistor is just a digital switch. If you apply a voltage to the control gate, then the switch closes through the creation of a “channel” from the source to the drain. Normally, when you remove that voltage, the channel dissipates, opening the switch, but with a floating gate, you can apply a higher voltage that forces the electrons to effectively teleport (quantum tunnel) into a little space near the control gate, called the floating gate, making it close permanently, even when that voltage you applied to the control gate is removed. You can also apply a negative voltage to the control gate to drain the floating gate and force the electrons out.
By making the switch close permanently, you can try to push current from the source to the drain. If it works, then that means the floating gate is charged (you stored a 1) and if not, then you haven’t. This works even after the machine has lost power. But over time the gate will leak, so it’s not truly permanent storage.
We achieve high data storage by making these transistors *very* small. Current channel widths are around 14 nm, or 0.000000014m
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