As many know I have started archiving pictures and data to keep the information secure. As I was creating my process of storing the data I began to think about the many different storage mediums that I have used in the past. I started using computers in the mid-80s which is an eternity by computer standards, and back then I used floppy disks. Today there are many more options you can use.
This post provides a retrospective of some means of storing data, as well as some current mediums and devices you can use today.
Storage Devices and Mediums
I have used various devices and mediums over the years. Below I list many that I have used as well as a description of each.
Floppy Disk
This was perhaps the most common medium for transfering data between computers, and was the forerunner to today’s CD/DVDs. Back in the 1980s, games and programs were small enough to fit on a single disk. There were 3 different size floppy disks that were developed: 8-inch, 5¼-inch, and 3½-inch. I never used an 8-inch size floppy disk, but I have used the 5¼-inch, and the 3½-inch sizes extensively in the past.
The 5¼-inch disks I used had a storage capacity of 360KB and were very flexible, meaning it the actual disk could be bent. While smaller, the 3½-inch could hold more data at roughly 1.44MB and was more difficult to bend as it used a harder plastic. Regardless of the disk, the data they contained could be corrupted by a magnetic field.
Hard Drive
Sometimes it is hard to think that the first PC my family owned contained a 20MB hard drive. This was large enough to store most of our applications and games. Today, you can easily find hard drives that are 1TB (terabyte – 1 trillion bytes) of storage space.
Hard drives have been the main storage device in PCs from the beginning, and will continue to be for the forseeable future. They are not large, 3.5″ for desktops and 2.5″ for laptops, fairly fast, and can hold a lot of data. They have evolved over time, by not only becoming larger, but also becoming faster. The future hard drives may be SSDs (solid-state drives) that contain no moving parts, require less power, generate little to no noise, and are faster than current technology.
Many people now use external hard drives to backup their data. When an external hard drive is connected, it looks very much like an internal hard drive and data can be copied to and from it very easily. The drive can easily be disconnected and connected into another computer very quickly and easily.
Tape
For large corporations, tape is still the main medium used for backups. There are many variations of tapes over the past few years, and they have been getting faster in speed, and larger in capacity. Tapes are a removable medium that can hold over 100GB of data, which is more than a CD or DVD can hold. For home users, however, tape isn’t very cost effective since they are very expensive individually. This is one reason you won’t see home users use tapes for backups.
CD/DVD
I grouped these two storage mediums together because they are optical disc, with the DVD (and now Blue-ray) being the successor to the CD. This is the most common choice for backing up data on a removable media. They can easily be written, especially since all computers come with a CD/DVD writer, and each disc is very cheap. The sizes of the disc varies depending on the media: 700MB for CD, 17GB for DVD (double-sided, dual layer) and 50GB for Blu-ray (dual layer).
The one debate about these discs is the lifespan. When backing up data to these discs, there is always questions about how long these discs will last until the data on them become corrupted and unreadable. Since CDs have only been around for twenty years, it is hard to say if the data will still be good in 300 years. Although companies do perform tests on their products, they may not be 100% accurate. The safe bet is to buy the discs from companies that are known for producing good quality, and not buy the cheapests discs available. Then again, how many people are going to be using CD/DVDs in 300 years?
Flash/Thumb/Pen Drives
Three names for the same technology. These are the long, thin USB devices you plug into a USB port and a new drive letter is created. You can then access the data on these drives. These are like the floppy disks of today. Unlike CD/DVDs, data on these drives can be changed and deleted and look just like a normal hard drive when connected. The storage space on these devices range from 128MB to 32GB or higher. These drives are also coming down in price, and are very affordable if you would like to transfer data very easily.
Flash Memory Card
While the flash drive mentioned above can easily be connected to a computer and used, a flash memory card needs a reader. In the days of floppy disks, you inserted the floppy disk into a floppy drive to read the data on the disk. Flash memory cards use a similar approach. These cards are similar in size to the flash drives mentioned above, but are used mainly with digital cameras. There are many different types of memory cards on the market, but a single reader may be able to support many of the types. As mentioned, this type of media is used mainly for storing digital photos on a digital camera than used as a backup.
Online Storage
While not a physical medium as the others in this list, this is becoming more common for backup purposes. One reason to use removable media for backups is so you can literally move the media to another location (offsite). This protects the data if something were to happen to the primary site. Online backups provide this security by copying your data to a server in a far off location over the Internet. The more popular services encrypt your data locally on your computer, and then send it over an encrypted connection to a server. From there it is stored, encrypted, until you need it. You can then restore it at any time. You would usually pay a monthly fee for such a service, and online companies have different pricing strategies. Using this medium will usually require a high-speed Internet connection to be effective.
Have Your Say
- What media do you currently use to store your data?
- What media have you used in the past?
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