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
First: how does it work conceptually?
Data is stored in the form of ones and zeros using binary. Any type of data can be encoded this way, including songs. A USB drive contains space for many, many ones and zeroes and so can store many songs.
So how does it do this? USB drives, also called “flash drives”, store data using something called “flash memory” (newer drives use other forms of solid-state storage, but that’s beside the point). Flash memory is slower than the in-your-computer memory, but it doesn’t reset itself when the power is lost. Think of a flash drive like millions and millions of tiny little bottles, each of which can hold a tiny electrical charge. A full bottle represents a 1, an empty bottle represents a 0.
That’s a fair analogy. In reality, this memory is made up not of bottles, but of an array of tiny electrical components–but the premise is the same. Each of those tiny electrical components can store a small electrical charge to represent a 1, or can be uncharged to represent a 0.
The computer can read these charges in a stream of 1s and 0s to get a sequence of data. That sequence can be taken back up through the layers of the computer to become a picture on the screen, or sound coming from the speakers.
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