top of page

Masive storage

The class of mass storage device USB (in English: USB mass storage device class whose acronym is USB MSC) is a set of protocols of communications that works on USB, defined by the USB Implementers Forum; it is a standard that provides a communication interface for a variety of storage devices.

Devices (such as digital audio players) that support this standard officially refer to it by the acronym "USB MSC", although it is popularly referred to as "USB Mass Storage" or UMS, which means "USB Mass Storage".

Not all digital audio players support this standard and use Media Transfer Protocol (MTP). Another standard that will be released to the market is the USB-IF. Both protocols are similar to MSC (information not always disclosed in the published device specifications).

Types of Mass Storage

Portable or external hard drives

A portable hard drive or external hard drive is a hard drive that is easy to install and transport from one computer to another, without the need to constantly consume electrical power or battery.

Since the optical discs have been extended as cheap storage, the philosophy of having the same type of interchangeable disc storage for storage, backup or final storage has been changed. Before they were usually magnetic or magneto-optical discs. Now it tends to have optical storage for a more definitive use and another medium without interchangeable discs for transport. This is the case of USB memories and portable hard drives.

A portable hard disk can be from a microdisc to a normal desktop hard disk with an adapter case. The most common connections are USB 2.0, USB 3.0 and Firewire, except SCSI and SATA. The latter were not designed for external use, but given their permitted cable length and their hot-plug capacity, it is possible to use them in this way.

Portable flash memories

The flash memory allows the reading and writing of multiple memory positions in the same operation. Thanks to this, the flash technology, by means of electrical impulses, allows much higher operating speeds compared to the original EEPROM technology, which only allowed to act on a single memory cell in each programming operation.

It is about the technology used in the USB memory and solid state drives.

The most common applications are:

  • The USB keychain that, in addition to storage, can include other services such as, fingerprint reader, FM radio, voice recording and, above all, as portable MP3 players and other audio formats.

  • The PC Cards (discontinued).

  • The flash memory cards that are used to store photos and videos on digital cameras. They are also common in mobile phones and tablets to expand storage capacity.

Digital audio players

A digital audio player is a device that stores, organizes and plays digital audio files. It is commonly referred to as an mp3 player, mp3 player, or simply mp3 (due to the ubiquity of the * .mp3 format), but digital audio players often reproduce other file formats like some other proprietary formats other than MP3, for example Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) as well as completely patent-free or "open" formats, such as Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and Speex (all part of the Ogg multimedia open project). Some players support restrictive DRM technology that are part of some proprietary formats, such as WMA DRM, which are often part of certain paid download sites.

There are mainly three types of digital audio players:

  • MP3 CD players - Devices that play CDs. Often, they can be used to play audio CDs and home data CDs that contain MP3 or other digital audio files.

  • Flash-based players - These are devices that store digital audio files in internal or external memory, such as memory cards. They are usually devices with little storage capacity, typically between 128MB and 64GB, which can often be extended with additional memory. They are cheap and shock resistant. (Currently they are the most used and has significantly increased their capacity, they can be of several Gb capacity). They are not provided with CD and have a USB port.

  • Hard disk-based players - Devices that read digital audio files from a hard disk. These players have larger storage capacities, from 1.5GB to 180GB, depending on the technology of the hard drive. In contrast to those based on flash they are sensitive to shocks or even the slightest vibration when they work can spoil them. Apple's iPod, Creative Zen and Commodore eVIC are examples of popular hard drive-based players.

Multimedia players

A media player, media player or simply a player is a computer program or a device capable of displaying a range of audiovisual content. As a general rule, this includes the reproduction of sound, video and images.1 In this way, the media player allows personal enjoyment of music, video clips, movies, photographs, etc.

There are many computer programs that can be called media players, although they differ in functionality and popularity. The following programs are aimed at playing music and video on a desktop computer:

  • AIMP

  • AllPlayer

  • AlShow

  • Amarok - Player, for Linux, Windows, Mac OS, and any other platform supported by the KDE desktop environment.

  • AVSPlayer

  • Banshee

  • BSPlayer

  • DAPlayer

  • Divx To Go

  • DragonPlayer

  • FLV Media Player

bottom of page