Learning About Storage Devices


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  Step 1:  Tape Drives

DAT tape drives (that is, tape drives that use Digital Audio Tape) can record up to 8GB or more on a single cassette tape. Just like more conventional tape recorders, however, they access data sequentially and are therefore suited for backup rather than regular data storage.
  Step 2:  What Are Magnetic Removable Drives?

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Magnetic removable-media drives combine the best features of floppy and hard drives. Like floppy drives, they use disks that are removable. Like hard drives, they store anywhere from dozens of megabytes to over a gigabyte on a single disk. This makes them perfect for backing up data and transferring large amounts of data from one computer to another. In addition, removable-media drives allow you to keep expanding your computer's storage capacity at a relatively low cost. Every time you run out of space, you just buy another cartridge.
  Step 3:  The Types of Magnetic Removable Drives

Magnetic removable-media drives can be grouped into two categories: small-format and large-format. The most popular contenders in the small-format category are Iomega ZIP drives, followed by the SyQuest EZ135 drive. These drives store a relatively small amount of data per cartridge (the ZIP stores 100MB and the EZ135 stores 135MB) and are relatively inexpensive (under $200 these days). They are well suited to transferring large files or groups of files from one computer to another-from home computer to office computer, for example, or between friends or colleagues. (You might think of these drives as high-capacity floppy disk drives.) The most popular large-format drives are currently the Jaz drive and the high-end SyQuest drive.
  Step 4:  ZIP Drives and Small-Format SyQuest Drives

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Most ZIP drives can be plugged into the parallel port for your printer. If you're working with someone who doesn't have a ZIP drive, you can potentially take your own drive to their home or office and plug it into the parallel port on their computer to transfer the files. Other ZIP drives use a SCSI port connection, which is less common on home or small office PCs, but save and retrieve files faster. SyQuest EZ135 drives are faster than ZIP drives, which makes them more suited to storing programs and data used often.
  Step 5:  Jaz Drives and Large-Format Syquest Drives

If what you need is a drive you can use both for backup and as an extension of your hard drive-one that is capable of running your favorite programs at the speed to which you've grown accustomed-you're better off with a large-format drive, such as the Jaz drive or high-end SyQuest drives, or even with a PD/CD drive or a magneto-optical drive (described shortly). Most large-format drives are almost as fast as most hard drives and can store between 540MB and 1.3GB per cartridge. (This means that even if you can't back up your entire hard drive onto one cartridge, you probably can fit it on two or three.) The prices for these drives run from about $300 to $700, with cartridges costing between $50 and a little over $100.
  Step 6:  CD-Recordable Drives

Another technology, called CD-Recordable (CD-R for short), lets you create CDs in a format that can be read by a regular CD-ROM drive (as well as by a CD-R drive). CD-R drives cost more than regular CD-ROM drives, although their prices have been dropping rapidly. (CD-R drive prices are now starting to dip below $500.) Although most CD-R drives only let you record data once on a CD, some let you add more data in separate sessions, adding to what's been previously recorded. One of the main attractions of this type of drive is that discs you record on using a CD-R drive can be read in any regular CD-ROM drive.
  Step 7:  Using CD-R Drives for Backups

CD-R drives are starting to become a viable mode of backing up data. Because they are much slower than hard disks, however, they're likely to be used primarily for backup and long-term storage rather than for storing data or programs that will be used regularly. A newer type of drive, called CD-Erasable (CD-E for short), lets you erase discs and reuse them. Because most people use CD-R drives to archive data long-term and the discs themselves are cheap (in the $10 range), this isn't much of an advantage.
  Step 8:  Phase Change CD-ROM Drives

An even newer type of drive, called a phase change CD-ROM drive, or PC/CD, wears two very different hats: It can both store 650MB of data on its reusable optical disks and read standard CD-ROM disks. You can back up most hard disks on just one or two of these disks. However, because its optical discs can only be read by other PC/CD drives, these drives are more suitable for backing up your own data than for distributing data or programs to other people. When playing regular CD-ROMs, most PC/CD-ROM drives are also a bit slower than standard CD-ROM drives. However, if you plan to use your CD-ROM drive primarily to install software or look up something in a multimedia encyclopedia, they are probably speedy enough.
  Step 9:  Magneto-Optical Drives

Magneto-optical (MO) drives use both a laser and an electromagnet to record information on a cartridge, the surface of which contains tiny embedded magnets. These cartridges can be written to, erased, and then written to again. They are slightly more expensive than CD-R drives but hold more data (typically in the 1-2.5GB range, although sometimes less). The drives can range anywhere from five hundred dollars to thousands of dollars.
  Step 10:  DVD Drives

DVD is a type of disk destined to replace videotape as the medium of choice for recording and distributing movies for home viewers. They're also expected to supplant CD-ROM drives in the coming years. The first DVD players, released in mid-1997, can read existing CD-ROM discs as well as DVDs, which range from 4.7GB to 17GB. Prices range from $600 to $1,000. The first applications for DVDs are things like countrywide phone and address listings.