Neutron2K's Computing Tutorials

Storage Media Guide

This guide is provided to give you a better knowledge and understanding storage media. Over the years, storage media has evolved enormously with most older type of storage media, such as floppy disks, becoming obsolete. This guide covers several types of storage media, their main uses and what equipment you need to use it.

The 3.5" Floppy Disk

3.5" Floppy disc In 1980, Sony released the first 3.5" floppy drives that would later go onto replace its predecssor, 5.25". The disks were originally Double Sided and could hold around 720KB (KiloBytes) of data. Shortly after the High Density (HD) version of the 3.5" floppy disk was released with a maximum capacity of 1.44MB and they are still around today, atough they have long been superceeded by other various other storage media and are rapidly dying out. Floppy Drives these days are extremely cheap (About £10 in the UK), as is the media (about £5 for a box of 25). As mentioned floppy drives remain in use despite the availability of other faster and higher capacity media, such as CDs and DVDS.

All you need to use a floppy disk, is a Floppy Disk Drive (FDD). You can have upto 2 Floppy Disk drives in a standard computer, but it is possibile to connect others via an interface such as Universal Serial Bus (USB). Each disk must first be formatted before being used, altough now a-days, floppy disks are already formatted out of the box.

CD-R/CD-RW

CD-R With the invention of the CD-ROM to hold software and games in the early 1990's, it wasn't long before manufacturers released a way for the home user to make their own CD's. CD-R's (Compact Disc Writables), were released in the mid 1990's and are used in homes around the world as a method to backup and transfer files and software. CD-R's work differently to those that recording companies and software developers use. The technology used by these companies is called CD-E and data is phased onto the disc, whereas with home CD Writers the data is burnt onto the CD with a Laser. Theres more to it than that but that is beyond the scope of this guide.

There are two types of CD-R Available today: CD-R and CD-RW (CD- ReWritable). Both formats come in two main capacitys: 650MB, (74 Minutes) and 700MB (80 Minutes). CD-RW's can be written to over and over again much like a hard-drive, where as once somthing is written on to a CD, its there for good and you cannot erase it, or write anything else onto it.

CD-R's and very cheap now, and altough CD-RW technology is slower than that of CD-r, CD-RW drive writing speeds are getting faster and faster.

To Read a CD of any kind, you need a CD Drive.
To write data to a CD-R or CD-RW, you need a CD Writer.

There was a time when CD Writers would only write to a CD-R, and in order to use CD-RWS as well you need another, more expensive drive. Now adays all CD Writers are CD-RW supported.

DVD

DVD -R The latest form of Compact Disk Storage is that of the DVD. DVD's, (Digital Versatile Disc), work in the same way as CD-R's, except that they can hold upto 4.6GB (GigaByte) of data!

The biggest use of DVD technology as you probably already know is that of DVD Video. The ability to hold full length films in highest possible video and sound quality on one small disk took the world by storm, and again it wasnt long before PC users were granted to power to make their own DVD's.

DVD's are not just used for holding videos, they are also used for the same purposes as CD-R's. Backing up Data, Holding Software and Computer Games, anything you can think of.

There are many different formats of DVD around, and at the moment there is no standard. Below is a list of the different types of DVD writable media available:

DVD-R
DVD+R
DVD-RW
DVD-RAM

When buying a DVD reader or writer drive, its important to take note of what media it supports. Newer drives support reading and writing in all of the above formats, but there are still quite a few that dont. There is also a great number of DVD players that will not read all formats. Its a very flimsy subject.

Iomega Zip Disk

Ieomega Zip Disk They look like a slightly larger version of a 3.5" floppy disk, and their technology works the same way. Whats the difference? One Zip Disk can hold the equivilient of about 70 3.5" Floppy Disks. (100MB). The newer and bigger version (the Zip 250) can hold 250MB.

Iomega released their infamous ZIP Drive in the mid 1990's and its been a main-stay method of transporting files from one computer to another. Zip Disks can now even be used to boot a computer like a floppy disk or CD can.

Altough they cannot hold anywhere near the amount of a CD, ZIP disks are more expensive but are slightly more reliable than CDS or DVDs. When you buy writable CD's or especially DVD's, theres a good chance that the media you have just purchased is actually low quality and a lot of the disks will be unusuable. The average box of 50 blank DVD-R's for example, will have about 80% usuable disks depending on the make and brand, and the drive your using them in.

ZIP Disks on the other hand, dont have this problem. There is only one possible way to read and write to a ZIP disk, and thats with a ZIP drive. ZIP Drives, like most other storage media drives, is available as an internal drive or an external one. The external ones can be connected via USB, whilst the internal ones can be connected via IDE or SCSI interfaces.

ZIP Disks, again like floppy Disks, need to be formatted before use and again these also come Pre-PC Formatted these days. ZIP Disks are still quite expensive, especially as CD-R's now about 20p each.

DAT Drives

D.A.T Tape DAT Tape Drives have been around for a long time. Altough slow, they have the ability to hold huge amounts of data, upto and including around the 10GB mark. They are more reliable than CDs and DVDs as they dont share the same flaws such as melting dye.

DAT Tapes are soley used as a Data Backup method by companies and the occasional home user. They are used to hold important information such as backups of a companies ever expanding finance reports and documents to copies of a companies websites and in-house software code.

Due to their speed, DAT Tape Drives are not suited to any other uses other than data backup. They also do not work in the same way as other drives and media. Each DAT drive comes with its own specific backup software for writing data to a tape and thats the only way you can do it. There are many different types of DAT and Tape Drives on the market.