What does Distributed Storage mean in HDFS?

Question

How does it differ from normal storage systems?

Answer 1

When you have a large volume of data and you have to divide it into smaller sub-parts to be able to store it in the various data-nodes that you have spread across your network, you're essentially distributing it. This correlates with the term 'Distributed' in HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System).

In Hadoop, this is done to have easy and fast access to that data and the various parts of that data. A distributed file system also facilitates data replication which means that there is no single point of failure or data loss. If a node goes bad or if data is corrupted, another node will act in its place and have a replica of that data. 

The concepts of hadoop can seem a bit complex at times but the basics are quite easy to understand. You can most definitely watch some online hadoop tutorials to get a better grasp.