Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index A direct access storage device, or DASD (pronounced DAZ-dee) is a form of magnetic disk storage, historically used in the mainframe and minicomputer (mid-range) environments. The redundant array of independent disks (RAID) is a form of DASD. "Direct access" means that all data can be accessed directly -- in a form of indexing also known as "random access" -- as opposed to having to seek sequentially through the data. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.