Hard Drives and Memory

Today, in class we learnt about hard drives and memory. So the mother board is the heart of the computer. Everything in the computer is connected to it. The computer is run by a small silicon chip called a processor. The two leading companies that manufactur processors are Intel and AMD. The speed of a processor is measured in hertz, which means how many cycles of electricity it can run through.

The hard drive is where the computer stores all it's information. This is where the computer stores the information when the power is off.

RAM (Random Access Memory) is memory that is used for storing information that is in use by current programs. When you turn the computer off, the RAM is cleared. The more RAM memory, the more programs you can run at the same time without slowing your computer down.

The bios of a computer is ROM (Read-Only Memory) memory. The bios tells the computer what to run when you start the computer up. Actions like check the connections to the keyboard, sound card, video card and etc. After this it tells the computer to run Windows or whatever the operating system in use is. The battery on the Motherboard powers the bios. In, ROM memory you can read from it, but you can't write to it.

Flash memory is a type of memory which is a storage medium. It is used in memory cards for Cameras and other devices.