Any storage medium that utilizes magnetic patterns to represent information is considered magnetic media. Examples of a magnetic media and magnetic storage are a tape drive, floppy diskette, and hard drive.

Above is an example of the read/write head inside a hard drive. The electromagnetic write head polarizes tiny sections of the hard drive so they face up or down (“North” or “South”) to represent the binary digits 1 or 0. The read head detects the polarization of each section of the drive to understand the data that was written.

All devices that use magnetic media

Below is a list of all devices in alphabetical order that use magnetic media to store, save, and write information. Clicking on any of the following links give you further information about each device.

  • Credit card and other magnetic cards
  • Floppy diskette
  • Hard drive
  • SuperDisk
  • Tape drive
  • Zip diskette

Floppy drive terms, Hard drive terms, Magnetic, Media, Optical media, Storage device

  • Floppy drive help and support.
  • Hard drive help and support.