Disk-based data structures are needed to store large datasets that exceed main memory capacity. Hard disks allow large storage but have slow random access. B-trees address this by storing data in pages that can be read sequentially, keeping the tree shallow. Keys in B-tree nodes separate the ranges of keys in subtrees, and nodes have between t-1 and 2t-1 keys. Operations on B-trees like search, insert, and delete involve reading and writing nodes to disk and splitting or merging nodes as needed to maintain the B-tree properties.