วันพุธที่ 30 เมษายน พ.ศ. 2551

Storing Information on Disks - Which Disk To Select?

Disks such as CD, DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray, flash drives, and external hard drives are convenient means of data storage. They are characterized by small size and light weight, which allows them to be easily carried and transported.

There can be different situations in which you may need to copy your information to a disk. To start with, you may want to distribute a piece of information among many people similar to the way they do it in a music industry when millions of copies of a single CD are made and sold.

You may also want to create a reserve copy of some critical data, or simply record some files to a disk in order to open them on another computer. Disks present a perfect solution for any of the above mentioned situations.

There are different ways in which you can record your information to a disk depending on the type of disk, its storage capacity, and the type of connectivity with the PC. Here we will consider the advantages and disadvantages of the most common types of disks.

CD

CD is probably the most wide-spread type of optical disk. The capacity of a single CD is about 700 MB and allows recording any types of digital data including music, video, images, and applications. To read and record a CD on a personal computer, a CD-ROM drive is required. The type of the CD-ROM drive defines the speed of reading and recording CDs. The CD may be recorded with the help of special recording software or using Windows recording tools.

DVD

DVD is an optical disk that allows recording up to 9 GB (double layer DVD) on a single disk. To read and record DVDs, a DVD-ROM is required. Special DVD burning software is needed to record information to DVD.

HD DVD

HD DVD is a high density optical disk that expands the storage of a single disk up to 60 GB. To read and record HD DVD, a HD DVD-ROM is required. To record HD DVD you must have DVD burning software.

Blu-ray

Blu-ray is a high density optical disk that allows storing up to 80 GB of digital data including high definition video. To be able to read and write Blu-ray disks, a BD-ROM must be available on a PC.

Flash drives

Flash drives are not disks in a proper sense of the word, but they do perform the same function as traditional disks such as data transfer and storage. Flash drives do not use spinning platters like standard hard drives, but they are not optical disks either, instead they use flash memory to record and store information.

Flash drives and USB flash drives

A distinction must be drawn between a flash drive and a USB flash drive. A flash drive imitates conventional hard drive is size, shape and interface, so it can serve as a replacement for conventional hard drive in extreme conditions as it has a lower sensitivity towards mechanical damage. A USB flash drive is a small lightweight hand-held device with a USB connector.

External hard drives

External hard drives are storage devices based on the hard drive technology which are not a part of computer hardware, but can be connected to a PC via any of the available interfaces such as USB, SATA, FireWire or SCSI.

The selection of disk type depends on your needs. Check out the disk recording software which allows recording digital data to all of the above mentioned types of disks with several useful options.

Alexander Golishev is a a copywriter for Novosoft LLC, software developer, with a great deal of expertise in data backup and recovery matters.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alexander_Golishev

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