Data+Storage

Remember the days when there were two places to store your data: On a floppy drive or on the computer's hard disk? Well, welcome to the 21st century where the average person can store data in tons of devices. Take a look at the list below.

 Not only are there lots of choices when it comes to device, but also the devices house more information. Ten years ago, I was slugging away at saving data on to 1.4 MEGABYTE 3 1/2 inch floppy (actually hard and stiff) drives and my 128 MEGABYTE PC desktop hard drive. It was torturous. Five years ago I bought my first flash drive. It housed a whopping 128 MEBA BYTES. Zip zip zip, the data were stored just like that. A few months ago I bought another flash drive with 32 GIGA BYTES. Whoa! If you download videos on a regular basis, it's likely that you own at least 1 terabyte* drive, and it probably takes only a few moments.
 * USB flash drive (also called jump drive and thumb drive)
 * Smart phone (think iPhone, HTC, and Blackberry)
 * Optical disk (DVD-R/RW, CD ROM)
 * iTouch
 * iPad
 * Desktop
 * Laptop
 * External hard drives

Not only has consumer storage of data evolved in terms of the amount of data stored on a device but also in terms of //where// the data are stored. Users can store data off-site in the "cloud" (For more information, please see the page called Cloud Computing). There are many options for storing your data off-site.

An advantage to storing data off-site is that someone else with supposedly a lot of technical know-how manages your data, so you don't have to worry so much about backing up. Another advantage is that your data are highly portable and accessible from anywhere on the planet--anywhere there's a connection to the Internet and anywhere the site on which your data are stored is not blocked.

The greatest disadvantage I see is that, by storing data in the cloud, you do not know who has access to your files. Many companies claim not to hack into or sell off your information, but how can you be sure? (At the same time, how many flash drives have you misplaced over the last few years?)

Anyway, here's one option for storing your data

Dropbox: Its basic service is FREE and allows users to store up to 2 GB of information. It saves, syncs, and shares. Dropbox works with Windows, Mac & Linux.

*A terabyte can hold about 300 hours of good quality video. It could hold 1,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Ten terabytes would take care of the holdings of the U.S. Library of Congress. Source: http://www.whatsabyte.com/