Hard disks contain non-removable disks. Hard disks typically store an operating system and vast amounts of data. They are useful for their speed and large storage capacity.

Floppy drives use small removable disks that can be transferred from computer to computer. The most common type of floppy disk is 3.5 square inches in size and can contain 1.44 MB of data. Older forms of disks include 3.5" disks that hold 720 KB of data, and 5.25" disks that contain 1.2 MB of data. While floppies sport portability, they tend to be slow and have a much shorter lifespan than hard disks.

CD-ROM drives use the same concept of rotational disk reading as other drives, but instead of using magnets to read and write to the disks, CD-ROM drives use a laser beam that responds to grooves in the CD surface. CD-ROMs have advanced into CD-RWs that can write to CDs and DVD-ROMs that can play DVD movies.

Drives such as Zip Drives and tape drives provide mass removable storage. They use read\write methods similar to floppy drives, but provide much more storage space.