Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide

Chapter 6. Storage Media

Storage Devices & Media

A Macintosh computer can read data from, or write data to, a wide range of storage devices and media, including:

• Hard disks—high capacity magnetic media.

• CD and DVD discs—high capacity, removable optical media.

• Flash drives—small, relatively high capacity USB devices that are commonly used to move files from one computer to another.

• RAID devices—extremely high capacity magnetic storage devices, normally used in business environments for servers or backup.

• Other legacy magnetic media, including floppy disks, or diskettes, and Zip disks.

To use storage media, it must be:

• Mounted—inserted, attached, or otherwise accessible to your computer.

• Formatted or initialized—specially prepared for use with your computer. ...