Computer Storage Solutions

I knocked my almost new 500gb external HD off the desk and lost thousands of photos. What’s the safest way to store those I recovered and future ones? I’d prefer not to use DVDs because it’s a pain looking for something and I’m not very organised. Is there a solid state external drive? would that be safer? or can you put a ssd into an enclosure? I only need about 100-150gb.
Perhaps I should just glue an external drive to the desk!!
If anyone has any solutions I’d be very grateful.

Get a second 500GB drive (or sell the 500 and get 2×250), and set up RAID 1 (mirrored drives) on them. RAID 1 writes identical data to two drives, therefore if one fails, the other one has all data preserved. You can then replace the failed drive, and repeat process.

My laptop recently packed up and I am considering buying a 7 inch netbook. I will use it for checking email and general internet use. As money is a bit tight, I am considering buying this 7 inch from Poundstretcher and its not clear what make it is. Would like to hear from anybody who has used one of these very small netbooks and hear if they were happy with it, or regretted it.
The spec is as follows:
Windows CE 5.0
7-inch widescreen
266MHz processor
128MB memory
4GB solid state storage (HD card storage up to 32GB)
Built In 802.11b/g Wireless
10/100 Ethernet
1x SD Card slot for upgrade - up to 32GB extra storage
3x USB for mouse / keyboard connection
Windows CE ActiveSync
Support for YouTube videos
Basic Office pack - Including SpreadCE Spreadsheet, WordPad, Foxit Pro Adobe Reader, Core Video Player
1 year warranty
Overall Dimensions: 211(w) x 140(h) x 30(d) mm
Thanks for the responses so far. I think you have persuaded me not to buy it. Its always good to hear experiences of other people. Will have a look at the suggestions put forward.

i would regret it, if i were you I woulds get a nice cell phone. honestly, that netbook would take like 20 minutes to start up, and you would be lucky if it could do youtube. THAT netbook has 4gigs of hard drive? My ipod nano has more than that!! really if you get like a blackberry or somthin you could browse the web and use email just as eisily

Actually i had an external hard drive. 320gb seagate…recently i lost it because it fell down from my hands when it is connected to pc…and i lost all my data in it due to internal short circuit
…this time i am planning for a safest one please help me..which one is good i require 500gb storage capacity one..i heard about transcend external hd shockproof is that good?..please explain about the product which you recommend me..and thanks in advance for all your help.
(main question: so which one is safe though the product is damaged i can get my data back…?)

Solid state or "flash" drives do have a significant advantage since they have no moving parts however, they are still subjected to temperature extremes which may cause damage over time. I feel the cost of these drives are too high at this time. Why not set up a RAID system using external or even internal drives. These drives are cheap and you can even hot swap certain RAIDS if the drives go bad. Redundancy is the key to data safety.

Does that mean you can’t install Adobe Photoshop CS4 on a solid state drive or do they only mean external flash-based storage devices?

They only mean external storage devices.

The reason is because typically, when installed, some applications need to be able to write to the Windows registry or store its configuration files (such as an INI file) in the user’s profile. This cannot be done in external storage devices such as USB flash drive. Photoshop is one of those applications that write to the registry and store a lot of configuration files on your profile.

This is also what separate the portable applications from them. Portable apps are software programs that are able to run independently without the need to install files to the system it is running in.

I am confused about Solid State Drives and other simple drives.Can anyone provide me with the list of SSD. Like what storage drives falls on SSD? Thanks
SSD VS HARD DRIVE

http://www.storagesearch.com/bitmicro-art3.html

SSD VS SATA DRIVE

http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/peripherals/8223-ssd-vs-sata-raid-a-performance-benchmark-

SSD VS RAPTOR

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/SSD_vs_VelociRaptor_vs_Raptor/SSD_vs_VelociRaptor_Raptor.html

How to install a Hard Drive into a desktop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JmttgAvldQ

How to choose a hard drive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfGUFpZX0YM

Hope this will be helpful.

Thank you.

I already know that flash memory has a limited amount of write cycles. But let’s say a flash memory device, like a solid-state drive or a simple USB flash drive, was stored in a safe place (a fire-proof safe), and not tampered with indefinitely. How long can it be stored without any of the data being permanently erased or affected? Not accounting the fact that the technology can become obsolete during it’s storage period.

Flash memory is a "permanent" memory method. But companies say that flash drives are not good for long term storage. I would count on them as safe for a few years, depending on the value of the data. If you are planning on using them this way I recommend reading the full warranty of your drive or finding a drive that includes some kind of time period there.

Table 1. Major capabilities of Envisat
• Sun-synchronous orbit: 800 km, 10 a.m.
descending node, 35-day repeat cycle
• Stellar yaw steering, for accurate pointing and
Doppler compensation of SAR
• 1900 Watts, 2500 kg for instruments
• Data recovery at up to 100 Mbps direct via
X-band or via Artemis
• On-board storage in solid-state recorders for
regional and global missions
• S-band command and control; 2 kbps uplink,
4 kbps downlink
rbulletin 106 — june 2001
26
The Envisat Satellite and Its Integration
P.A. Dubock, F. Spoto
Envisat Programme, ESA Directorate of Earth and Environment Monitoring from
Space, ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands
J. Simpson, D. Spencer
Astrium Ltd., Bristol, UK
E. Schutte & H. Sontag
Astrium GmbH, Friedrichshafen, Germany
Introduction
Envisat is the largest and most complex freeflying
satellite ever built in Europe. It will carry a
comprehensive series of instruments designed
to observe a whole series of interrelated
phenomena that characterise the behaviour of
the Earth’s environment as a system. The
satellite, together with its related ground
systems, will continue and extend the data
services provided by the Agency’s earlier ERS-
1 and ERS-2 satellites. In particular, Envisat
should substantially increase our knowledge of
the factors determining our environment. It will
make a significant contribution to environmental
studies, notably in the areas of atmospheric
chemistry and ocean studies, including marine
biology.
The observations made by Envisat will
eventually be continued and extended by a
series of new, smaller satellite programmes
being initiated within the Agency’s Earth
Observation Envelope and Earth Watch
Programmes.
Background
The Columbus Programme approved at the
ESA Ministerial Council Meeting in The Hague
in 1987 included the development of a multimission
Polar Platform as part of the
International Space Station. Following a series
of studies and iterations with potential users, an
implementation re-using the equipment and
architecture of the Spot-4 spacecraft bus
design, although with a significantly enlarged
structure, was decided upon. The main
development phase (Phase-C/D) for the Polar
Platform programme was awarded to British
Aerospace in Bristol (UK) – later to become
Matra Marconi and now Astrium Ltd. – in late
1990.
Meanwhile, in the Earth Observation area, the
Agency was considering, as ERS-1 grew closer
to launch, how to continue and extend the
services offered. In 1988, these elements were
drawn together in an ESA proposal to its
Member States for an overall ‘Strategy for Earth
Observation’. These considerations led to the
adoption of the POEM-1 programme, using the
Polar Platform, at the Ministerial Council
Meeting in Munich in November 1991. There
continued to be an evolution in the payload
complement for POEM-1. This culminated in a
splitting of the payload into separate Envisat
and MetOp satellites, which was finally agreed
at the next Ministerial Council in Granada in
November 1992. A Phase-C/D contract for the
procurement and support of the Envisat
payload (the so-called ‘Mission Prime Contract’)
was awarded to Dornier Satellitensystem, now
Astrium GmbH, in July 1992.
For the early years of this new millennium, Envisat is ESA’s major
contribution to the study of the Earth as a system. Carrying ten
sophisticated instruments – both optical and radar – it is the largest
and most complex satellite ever built in Europe. It has been designed
and tested over a period of more than 10 years. Much of the
integration and test programme was conducted on site at ESTEC, in
Noordwijk (NL). It will be the first satellite launched into a polar orbit
by Ariane-5.
This article summarises the design and engineering of Envisat, and
explains the model philosophy and test approaches used. The launch
campaign plans are also briefly described.
The satellite makes use of the multi-mission
capability of the Polar Platform originated in
the Agency’s Columbus Programme. This
development also forms the basis for MetOp.
The Polar Platform in turn has drawn heavily on
the equipment and technologies developed
within the framework of the French Spot
programme. Almost all of the instruments on
the satellite have been specifically developed
for Envisat, with one or two having a strong
design heritage from ERS.
the envisat satellite and its integration
27
As a result of the programmatic origin of the
satellite, there remain two large contracts for its
implementation:
– the Polar Platform Prime Contract (Astrium
Ltd.), and
– the Mission Prime Contract (Astrium GmbH).
These two large contracts, interfacing with
each other at some of the technically most
critical on-board locations, caused a number of
problems during the development programme.
The satellite integration programme has,
however, largely been carried out at ESTEC
following the closure of Astrium’s Bristol site. As
a result, many of the technical personnel have
been collocated (with ESA) at ESTEC. This, and
the grouping of both contractors within the
Astrium company, has ensured a much
smoother technical path for the programme in
its final phase.
The organisation of the Agency’s project teams
initially also reflected the programmatic split,
with separate project divisions for Polar
Platform and payload. More recently the project
teams hav
More recently the project
teams have been merged within a single
division. This too has simplified the technical
conduct of the programme.
Major capabilities
The satellite is designed for a Sun-synchronous
polar orbit (Table 1). The planned operating
altitude is 800 km, although a range of altitudes
can be selected allowing variations in the
repeat cycle of the ground track. The local time
at the equator for the descending node has
been selected as 10.00 a.m., which optimises
illumination conditions for part of the optical
payload.
The selected orbit has a repeat cycle of 35
days and an orbital period of 100.6 min. Its
inclination is 98.54 deg, which implies small,
uncovered areas at the poles for instruments
with limited swath widths. The on-board
systems allow the ground track to be
maintained within 1 km and the local hour to
within 5 min. One of the on-board instruments
(DORIS), when used in conjunction with a
dedicated set of ground stations,
provides realtime
knowledge of position to within 50 cm,
and a precision altitude restitution to within 5
cm.
In nominal operations, the satellite is pointed
using star trackers in a ‘stellar yaw-steering
mode’. In this mode, the satellite is yawed to
compensate for the apparent motion of the
Earth across-track beneath the satellite. This
compensation simplifies the processing of
Doppler signals from the synthetic-aperture
radar. When using the star trackers, random
pointing errors will be less than 0.0085 deg,
and the stability over all periods of up to
170 s better than 0.015 deg. Attitude
estimation will be better than 0.04 deg. This
pointing performance allows both adequate
geographical location for data measured on the
Earth’s surface, and a vertical resolution when
viewing the atmosphere at the limb of better
than 3 km.
The satellite provides an average of 1900 W for
instrument operations through sunlit and
eclipse portions of the orbit. This enables all
instruments except MERIS and ASAR to be
operated continuously throughout the entire
orbit. MERIS, the Medium-Resolution Imaging
Spectrometer, requires sunlight to operate.
ASAR, the Advanced Synthetic-Aperture
Radar, produces such enormous quantities of
data in its high-resolution mode that its
operation is limited to 30 min per orbit.
The SM includes eight batteries, and the solar
array. This is a flat-pack array designed for the
Polar Platform by Fokker Space (NL), based on
their standard design elements. Once deployed,
the array is rotated to point continuously towards
the Sun using a solar-array drive mechanism,
which is attached to the base of the central cone.
The propulsion module on top of the cone
contains four tanks, which hold 300 kg of
hydrazine.
A single central computer containing both
command and control and AOCS functions
performs on-board data management. It
controls the SM equipment via a standard onboard
data-handling bus. The central computer
also communicates with the central computer
of the PLM via the same bus.
The data-handling capabilities of the spacecraft
have also been sized to support the global and
regional missions. All instruments except
MERIS and ASAR operate continuously,
together producing 4.6 Mbps. There are
separate additional regional missions for
MERIS (up to 25 Mbps) and ASAR (up to 100
Mbps). On-board storage in redundant solidstate
recorders allows the recording and
dumping of all data from the global and regional
missions. Data can be downlinked directly
when overflying a suitable ground station, such
as Kiruna in Sweden, via a fixed X-band
antenna, or when within visibility of Artemis, via
a steerable Ka-band antenna.
Command and control of the satellite and
payload is via an S-band transponder. The
satellite will normally be operated by uplinking a
24-hour command timeline. Housekeeping
data is available in real time when over a
ground station, but is also included in the global
mission data stream.
The satellite is designed for launch only by
Ariane-5. It has a total launch mass of 8100 kg,
of which 2150 kg are instruments. The physical
size of the spacecraft requires the Ariane-5
long fairing, for which Envisat is the first
customer.
Major components
The satellite is made up of two major subassemblies,
the Service Module (SM) and the
Payload Module (PLM), with a simple structural,
electrical and avionics interface between them.
All instruments are physically located on the
PLM, to which the instruments have a largely
standardised interface. The modularity of the
design has made it possible to conduct by far
the majority of the integration work on the SM,
PLM and instruments in parallel.
Service Module
The SM provides the standard satellite support
functions, and was subcontracted to Astrium
SAS. It is based on the design of the
Spot Mk-
II service module, but with a number of
important new developments, particularly in the
structure and solar-array areas (Fig. 1).

Maybe.

1.How is a monitor’s screen size measured? It is measured diagonally across from one corner to the other.
2.Dot pitch is the distance between a dot and the closest dot of the same color (red, green or blue) on a color CRT.
3.Resolution is the degree of sharpness of a computer generated image measured by the number of dots per linear inch in a hard-copy, or the number of pixels across and down on a screen.
4.A Pixel is the smallest element of an image that can be individually processed.
5.CRT stands for cathode-ray tube. It is a vacuum tube in which a hot cathode emits electrons that are accelerated as a beam through a high voltage positive terminal, focused or deflected electro statically or electromagnetically to allow to show on a screen.
6.LCD means liquid-crystal display. It displays readings continuously on liquid crystal film sealed between glass plates that change optical properties when voltage is applied.
7.Plasma is a translucent greenish type of quartz.
8.DMA is direct memory access. It is a technique of transferring to and from external storage.
9.Solid state is transistor or crystal that can control current without moving parts, heated filaments, or vacuum gaps.
10.Clock cycle is the transition from 0 to 5 volts and back.
11.Serial port is a connector on a computer to which you can attach a serial line connected to peripherals that communicate using a serial protocol.
12.Parallel port is an interface in a computer system where data is transferred on more than one wire.
13.A PC card is a small removable circuit board that houses a device like a disk drive especially for laptops.
14.CD-R means Compact Disk Recordable. You can write information on it but cannot erase or modify it.
15.CD-RW stands for Compact Disk Rewritable. Data can be written multiple times.
16.Duty Cycle is the proportion of time of when a system or device is operated. It can be expressed as a percentage.
17.Kilobytes are about 1000 bytes.
18.Megabytes are about a million bytes.
19.Gigabytes are one billion bytes.
20.Terabytes are one trillion bytes.
21.USB (Universal Serial Bus) is a plug in interface connecting a computer and an add on device.
22.AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) is an interface that enables 3-D graphics to display faster on ordinary personal computers.
23.System Bus connects the CPU to main memory on the motherboard.
24.PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) bus is an interconnection system between a microprocessor and hooked up devices where expansion slots are close for high-speed operation. Intel designed it.
25.ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) bus is a standard interconnection that allows 16 bits at a time to flow between the motherboard circuitry and an expansion slot card and its associated devices.
26.NiCd (Nickel Cadmium) is a type of rechargeable battery used for portable computers.
27.NiMH (Nickel Metal Hydride) are rechargeable lithium batteries.

They are all correct if that is what you are asking.
~

I am trying to compare these data storage types and get best storage ammount for cost.
Floppy discs, dvd-rw, cd- rw, Hard drives – 2.5” format, Hard drives - 3.5” format, SSD (Solid State Drives), Flash drives and Tapes, and wondered if anyone knows of a magazine article or table somewhere that shows this.
I am trying to compare the ammount of storage that you can get for your money - to say that you cannot compare them is nonsense, negative and pointless.
If you are just going to be dissmissive and glib you are not answering a question.

Well there’s tables for each one, not all of them. Just go to newegg.com, click at the top bar on computer hardware and it will give you a drop-down list. Select what you want (Hard Drives for instance) and you get a HUGE display of all they sell and the side bar lets you narrow it down. All PC components are listed in the drop-down menu. tigerdirect.com has a sidebar menu instead on the left.

Max Payne and Max Payne 2, Im buying an asus 900 XP i want to download these titles from gamestop to download and these are the specs for asus 900
8.9" Display, 1024 x 600 resolution
Intel CPU & Chipset Intel® Celeron M353
WLAN Built-in 802.11b/g
Memory DDR II 1GB
Display Card Intel UMA
Hybrid Storage XP: 12GB /16GB Solid Solid State Drive

30GB External HDD (Optional)
Camera 1.3M Pixel webcam
Storage Cards SD/ MMC (SDHC)
Input / Output 3xUSB / VGA-out (D-Sub, 15pin) / earphone jack / mic / RJ45 10/100 Mbps
Audio HD audio / built-in speakers
Battery Li-ion Battery
2.5 hrs*

Dimensions 22.5cm(W) x 17.0cm(D) x 2cm~3.38cm(H)
Weight 0.99 kg
im on a budget but i think the Max payne game does need much requirements below $350

you can’t play max payne 2 on that very well. It doesnt have dedicated graphics, its got 1GB of ram and the display is too small and doesn’t have enough resolution. Its got the slowest processor you can get right now. Why would you choose that system?
That solid state drive is good but own’t help you with your games at all, other than installing and saving games. and that drive is what increases the price. ugh. If you want to play games, dont get that system.
Go out and get a system that has core2duo or xeon processor. with at LEAST 2 GB ram and 250 GB hard drive space. Graphics should be at 1440×900.

if cost is your issue. try to spend about 700 bucks on a decent enough laptop. if you want to have a GOOD laptop for gaming, minimum 1100 bucks