Is the Main Memory or RAM a Storage Device?

Zebedi1

Honorable
Jun 16, 2016
124
0
10,690
Hi, so in a test, a question was a multiple choice and you had to tick the device that was not a storage device. As far as I was concerned, they all were. Appraently, RAM is not a storage device? Im kind of confused by this because RAM can be reffered to as the primary storage device. Also, she seems to think that unplugging USB mice or plugging them in could "fry the motherboard". True?
 
Solution
Anything that can hold a data value is a storage device and that includes the registers and caches inside of a CPU. If the question is ambiguous then the person who created the test isn't qualified to create tests. You shouldn't need to make assumptions because ambiguity leads to errors in many cases. If you've ever written software based on ambiguous specs then you know exactly what I'm talking about.

USB was designed, from the very beginning, to be hot pluggable. It doesn't mean that damage can't happen.

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
"Storage" generally refers to non volatile 'storage'. A place where you keep things. The hard drive, SSD or similar.
RAM is volatile. Power off, and whatever is on it goes away.

Probably a poorly worded question, though.

Plugging a USB mouse? Generally won't kill anything. But there are no absolutes.
 
I witnessed an incident where plugging a mouse into a hot motherboard did, indeed, fry the motherboard but it wasn't the mouse. It was a very dry day and the guy's computer was on the carpet on the floor. So he had to get on his hands and knees to scoot under his desk to plug the mouse in. When he did, a spark jumped from his finger tip to the mouse socket and fried the mobo. He had picked up static electricity from scooting around on the carpet. I don't remember if it was a PS2 mouse or a USB mouse.
 
Anything that can hold a data value is a storage device and that includes the registers and caches inside of a CPU. If the question is ambiguous then the person who created the test isn't qualified to create tests. You shouldn't need to make assumptions because ambiguity leads to errors in many cases. If you've ever written software based on ambiguous specs then you know exactly what I'm talking about.

USB was designed, from the very beginning, to be hot pluggable. It doesn't mean that damage can't happen.
 
Solution