Volatile
Volatile is a term used when
talking about storage devices, such as a hard drive, or a memory chip. If a
device is volatile, this means that it will lose all of the data that is stored
on the device when the computer is shut down. An example of a volatile device
is DRAM. If a device is non-volatile, then it will conserve all the data, and
will be able to be accessed when the computer is booted up again, such as your
hard drive.