NOTE

Disk

Historical notes comparing the characteristics of disk and memory.

Computer Architecture & AssemblyCreated Updated 1 min readhistorical

This is a historical learning note and may contain outdated or incomplete understanding.

1. Disk vs. Memory

Disk Memory
Cost Low High
Capacity Large Small
Access speed Slow; sequential I/O is usually friendlier than random I/O, especially on HDDs Fast; actual performance is still affected by CPU cache, locality, and other factors
Storage characteristic Data is usually retained after power-off Data is lost after power-off
  • In general, memory access latency is far lower than persistent storage such as disk. The exact speed relationship depends on HDD / SSD, caches, access patterns, and workload, so it should not be expressed as a fixed equality.

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