Users generate data as they interact with apps. Applications often require access or save this data to function properly and provide the best user experience. This data includes personalized settings, media and other documents. It can also be used to monitor clicks, product purchases and other conversions within the application. The data can be gathered by a variety methods, including through asking the user, taking it as a result of their online behavior, or by purchasing it from a third-party. The ideal scenario is that the customer’s data is centrally located and saved in the same format for integration and easy exchange between applications. There are new standards for customer data profiles according to industry sectors that can aid in defining the data models to be used.

There are many ways to store data, and the method used by an application will affect the way the user interface looks. File storage is the most popular, where data is stored in files and folders which are arranged in a hierarchical fashion. This is the method employed by hard disk drives and cloud-based storage such as Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. Block storage is a different method where data is broken into blocks and then stored anywhere http://www.virtuadata.net in the storage infrastructure. They are identified with identifiers that make them easy to find and then act upon.

The first systems had built-in tools that gave specific information about the properties of the storage medium in textual format. Modern systems, like Android provide visualizations to assist with these functions, including capacity/usage as well as lifespan. The visualisations for capacity/usage are usually horizontally bar charts that are stacked. Lifespan visualisations are usually presented as a circular pie graph, or its variants like doughnut charts.