What is the difference between storage media and storage devices

Question Detail: 

I am having confusion whether storage media and storage devices are the same terms. I found on this yahoo answers page that there is a subtle difference but very tricky to understand.

I have googled a lot but cannot find the satisfying answer.

Can anyone kindly expailn the difference between these two terms with easy-to-understand examples.

Regards

Asked By : swdeveloper

Best Answer from StackOverflow

Question Source : http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/18384

Answered By : Guy Coder

Media is what holds the information, e.g. disk platen, CD, magnetic stripe.
Device is what uses the media and provides a physical interface.

For devices that have removable media, such as CD/DVD players the distinction is easy. For other devices where the media is an integral part of the device, the distinction is not so easy because the media is not designed to be removed, e.g. hard drive, thumb drive.