I. Прочитайте текст и переведите его на русский зяык, обращая внимание на употребление сложных времен, а также на союзное и бессоюзное подсоединение предложений. Storage

Consider storage which is an essential part of a computer system. Besides memory that the computer employs while using the required data and programs, it needs the place to keep program files and related data when it is not using them. This goal is accomplished by storage. Contents are retained in storage even when the computer is turned off while the programs or data you put into memory disappear after your switching off the computer.

The physical components on which data can be saved are called storage media. The function the storage media perform is holding data permanently. The hardware components that write data to, and read it from storage media are known as storage devices. For instance, a disk is a storage medium, whereas a disk drive is a storage device.

One of the main categories of storage media is magnetic storage. The examples of this kind of storage are as follows: magnetic tapes, diskettes, hard disks. There is no need to speak about two first items as they are not employed now. However, the hard disk, whether it is removable or not, has extremely high capacity. This storage medium is still considered the most common device we use in computers.

As low-capacity diskettes didn’t meet the consumer’s needs the storage manufacturers offered compact disks (CDs) based on the advanced optical technology. Their advantage was that they had much higher capacity than diskettes. Hence, since the mid-1990s nearly all new PCs have been sold with a built-in CD-ROM drive.

Although standard compact disks were widely used at that time computer firms were continuing to improve them. As a result, they produced a digital versatile disk, or in other words digital video disk (DVD). Though DVD is of the same size as standard CD this high-density storage medium has much higher capacity than CD. Whether it is a standard CD or a DVD the information can be written on both of them either once or multiple times. Therefore they are called CD-Recordable (CD-R) and CD-Rewritable (CD-RW) or DVD-Recordable (DVD-R) and DVD-Rewritable (DVD-RW).

Because of the continuing demand for greater capacity, hardware manufacturers always search for better kinds of storage media. Lately this problem has been solved with the usage of flash cards. Though flash memory is based on microcircuit technology it is of nonvolatile type. Consequently, this kind of memory stores information permanently. As this microcircuit small-size storage medium has much higher capacity than CDs consumers are purchasing more and more systems based on flash cards rather than CD-ROM units. Besides high capacity flash cards have another advantage: their contents may be erased as many times as it is necessary so that new information might be written on them.

II. Выделите и текста общую информацию о внешней памяти и ответьте на следующие вопросы.

1. What is storage?

2. What is the goal of storage?

3. What is the difference in the action of storage and memory?