DATA STORAGE SYSTEM

A control element incorporated in an IC card divides externally input data into a plurality of words. It adds a word-discriminating data item and a chain data item to each of these words, and writes these words into the data memory incorporated in the IC card. Each chain data item indicates the storage location within the data memory where the word next to the word to which the chain data item has been added is stored. Each word-discriminating data item indicates whether or not the data with the word-discriminating data item added thereto is the first of the words forming the externally input data. The control element adds, to the first word, a word-discriminating data item whose most significant bit is "O", and adds a chain data item, whose value is also "O", to a word when the next word thereto is the last word. In addition the control element holds the data items, which indicate the storage locations of the words, while the words are being stored in the data memory, adding these data items, as chain data items, to the words when all of the words have been correctly written into the data memory.