Mass storage involved in the present HOWTO are rewritable random access ones. Most of them are magnetic rotating disks (floppies, Hard Drive) or flash memory (USB key or any kind of memory card).
For example, cdroms and dvds are notconcerned by this HOWTO ( see Wikipedia). Tapes are not either.
Mass storage are used by the kernel, so the basic doc can be found on the kernel Web site
Reference site should be the International Disk drive Equipment and Materials Association. Shouldbecause this Web site is not very friendly.