| Now it is hard to imagine our living without PCs. We apply them at work and for entertainment. Communication with people, listening to music, watching films, playing games and different other activities are represented by PCs. Personal computers are strongly linked to digital data. Data are generally saved to the HD of the personal computer, but it is strongly advised to have a copy of all the significant data on other information storage medium. This will provide the security of this information in case of trouble with the HD.
There are a few types of information storage media. The most popular among them are magnetic tapes, hard disc, digital versatile and compact discs and flash memory discs. All these information storage media have their pros and cons. It's up to you to decide what data storage medium to choose in order to store your back up info.
Magnetic tape used to represent the most widespread medium for data storage. It represents an access medium, therefore the access time is rather slower than in case you use HD. But at the same time continuous writing and reading are usually much faster. With the invention of new recording mediums floppy disks are becoming obsolete, but they are still in use in emergency situations, because they are the most reliable information media.
One more type of information storage media is optical disk backup system, generally referred to as compact disks and digital video disks. This system is effective and easy in use. An essential benefit of optical disks is that info can be saved to and read from them almost on any computer with a standard CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive.
Flash memory disc backup system, represented by USB drives, SmartMedia, Memory Stick and others, is the following move of backup data storage development. These devices are portable, easy to apply and able to store a lot of data. All the modern personal computers have facilities to read information from such disks. Their only disadvantage is high cost comparing to floppy and optical disks. But at the same time flash memory disk backup system is the most reliable and convenient data storage medium. |
