Storage - Hard drives, CD/DVD drives, Flash or Pen drives,
SSD, and Tapes.
Hard drives are one of the greatest bargains to day, the most bang for your
buck.
Considerations - What type of drive? What capacity, How many?
Hard drives -
Types: Current drive types are IDE (ATA) or SATA (Serial ATA) you need to know
what type you need before you buy. If you have an older computer more than
likely it has a IDE controller, newer computers are coming with the SATA1 or
SATA2 controllers embedded along with the IDE for CD/DVD drives (back ward
compatibility).
If you have a IDE and want to purchase that 300 gig SATA drive you will need a
couple of things before you can make it run. You will need a SATA controller,
some manufactures are including the controller with their drives, some are not.
You will also need a power cable converter.
As with other upgrades what do you want you new drive to do? Is it for increased
storage for data and programs? Is it for your OS, will it be the Boot drive?
If you are upgrading for just storage,
then go for the SATA and the biggest you
can afford. I have Doom 3, Half Life 2, these programs come on DVD's and they
are compressed files, in addition Half Life 2 goes out to the internet and down
loads updates every time I play the game (well it tries, I don't let it). The
reason I put these facts in is that my 20 gig hard drive was to full to load
these two games, my choices were delete something or upgrade.
Upgrade was the
choice.
If you are upgrading for the OS you may want to consider
the biggest you can
afford, also you will have to stay with the controller embedded in your main
board, I have not seen a bootable SATA add-on controller at this time.
CD and DVD -
CD/DVD - All DVD drives will read the CD format so why buy a CD Drive? If you
are replacing a CD with a DVD consider buying a Writeable DVD, the latest Dual
Layer DVD Burner costs less than a regular CD drive in today's market! A DL DVD
that will create DVD movies, 8.7 gig of data storage will also read and write cd's! With rewriteable cd or dvd you can use this device for your backup, if you
back up your data selectively.
Flash memory devices -
The wonder of technology - Flash drives (or pen drives) are the latest and
greatest from the memory innovators and manufactures. These devices store data
on a chip that retains the data when the power is removed. You can get these
devices in different capacities. The only draw back I can see with a flash drive
is that they are very small and can be misplaced, this could be a security risk
if you put personal data on one.
SSD or Solid State Drives
Like the flash or pen drives the SSD uses the same
technology to store your data. The difference comes from the size (which it will
change), power requirements, and capacity. These drives only come in SATA format
so if you have a computer that has only IDE interfaces you will need a SATA
interface controller. At this time the highest capacity is 128 Gig and it costs
over $400 (depending on manufacture) but with time the capacity will increase
and the price will drop. I have written a review here.
Tape -
Adding a tape drive to do backup of your data is a wise choice. With the latest
hard drives moving towards 500 gig you wonder if you can afford a tape drive
that will back up all that data in a timely manner. In a word: No. If you
selectively backup data only you can get by with a fairly cheap drive with a 10
to 30 gig capacity... (fairly cheap means how important is your data?) After
considering your options you may want to use a DVD to back up your data.
Q and A
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with any publication not all information is available due to space, time, or
subject constraints.
If you have a question that you did not find the answer
on this web site you a can
ask your question here and we will endeavor to get you the most up to date
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