
52 Chapter 3 Computer Hardware
withstand temperature extremes, magnetic fields, and the wear and tear of a duffle bag
are important criteria for digital data on the move.
Finally, a fifth use of secondary storage is to archive digital information for long-term
preservation. Digital files abound in all the transactions of daily life and schools, hospi-
tals, governments, businesses, and other organizations must preserve them for legal and
historical purposes. In the past, this meant large vaults of file folders. Later, these files
were transferred to tape and stored in special tape libraries. Archived data requires stor-
age media with massive ...