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use a rotating magnetic disk to store data; access time is longer than for semiconductor memory, but the cost per stored data bit is very low, and they provide random access to any location on the disk. Formerly, removable disk packs were common, allowing storage capacity to be expanded. Optical discs store data by altering a pigment layer on a plastic disk and are similarly random access. Read-only and read-write versions are available; removable media again allows indefinite

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