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Computers—Storage                                                        1



                           and Memory Device










                     Goal Glimpse

                         Data and Information                            Computer Memory

                         Measuring the Computer’s Memory




                 In the previous classes, you  learnt letters and  numbers.  Do you  still remember
                 them? That’s because they were stored in your memory. Similarly, computers have
                 memory to store all the data and instructions required to perform various tasks.


                    DATA AND INFORMATION

                 Think of data as unprocessed, raw facts and figures, such as words, numbers, images,
                 and symbols. They resemble jigsaw pieces scattered on a table. Data by itself is
                 meaningless. Once the data is processed and organised, it becomes information.
                 Information gives a proper meaning. Examples of information are reports, graphs,

                 sentences, etc.
                    COMPUTER MEMORY


                 Computer memory is where data and information are kept. The Central Processing
                 Unit (CPU) gets data from memory to work on it. Once it has finished processing,
                 it sends the updated data back to memory for storage. There are two types of
                 memory:

                 1.  Primary Memory
                 2.  Secondary Memory

                 Primary Memory

                 Primary, or main, memory is where a computer stores data and instructions while
                 running. The CPU can directly access it. It is fixed on the motherboard. There are
                 two types of primary memory:

                 1.  Random Access Memory (RAM)
                 2.  Read-only Memory (ROM)


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