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Hard drives and CD/DVD recorders are both continually dropping in price (and adding extra capacity and features), which is fortuitous because today’s operating systems and applications tend to take up more and more hard drive space. Most serious PC users eventually add a second drive (or replace their existing drives with new units). Upgrading these devices is a storage upgrade because you use these devices to permanently store (or record) data for later use.
Adding a hard drive
Most of today’s PCs use Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE, sometimes called PATA) hard drives, which can be mounted internally (within your PC’s case) or externally (by connecting to a USB or FireWire port). You’ll also encounter Serial ATA (or SATA) hard drives, which are becoming more popular every day — they’re significantly faster than IDE drives and easier to configure. Finally, some super-high-performance machines still use internal SCSI hard drives.
Here’s how to tell which type of drive you should choose:
- Internal: Choose an internal drive if you don’t mind opening your PC’s case and installing a new drive. Internal drives are significantly cheaper than external drives and are somewhat faster than even an external FireWire or USB 2.0 drive. Finally, you won’t use any more of your precious desktop space.
- External: Choose an external drive if you would rather not open your computer or if you have no available hard drive bays left in your computer’s case. (Don’t laugh — technotypes can fill up even the largest tower case with all sorts of devices.) External hard drives can be shared among computers that have the same ports, and you can simply unplug an external drive and carry it with you.
Adding a recorder or a tape drive
CD/DVD recorders and backup tape drives have been around for years, but only with the advent of USB and FireWire have they become attractive to the PC power user as external devices. That’s because in years past, hardware manufacturers had to depend on the PC’s parallel port to connect these peripherals. The PC’s parallel port was never designed for high-speed data transfer, so parallel port drives were slow.
However, today’s FireWire and USB 2.0 drives are almost as blazing fast as their internal brethren! Therefore, as long as you have a USB or FireWire port, you can either stick it in your machine or leave it outside. It works like a charm either way.
One final word about tape backup drives: They’re beginning to disappear from the PC landscape because today’s recordable DVD formats can hold 4.7GB (or 8.5GB for a dual-layer drive) on a single disc — and DVD recorders are faster and more reliable than most tape drives. In fact, the new generation of recordable Blu-Ray drives can hold 30 or 50GB on a single disc! Therefore, before you invest in a hideously expensive digital audiotape (DAT) backup drive, consider buying a (comparatively) inexpensive rewriteable DVD drive instead and use it for your backups.
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