Computer Storage Solutions

its a lifetime storage.. basically 4x the regular hard drive …. and that lasted on aerage of 5 years …. so yeah ..

Which type of data storage has the longest life expectancy ?

Is it:
Internal Hard Drive ?
External Hard Drive ?
Solid State Drive ?
Optical Disk (CD, DVD, BD) ?
Other ?

given that all of these mediums are used and handled with extreme precaution and care.

Also try to list the life expectancies of these mediums in descending order… from the longest to the shortest.
Try to answer in more than 3 words unlike the first answerer… thanks in advance

The best data storage you can get right now would be an Solid State Drive because it has no moving parts, it takes less power and it performs much faster then older hard drives. However they are expensive because they are new and the technology has not been perfected to the point of being consumer friendly. You can still buy them but they are going cost more than a normal hard drive.

I would list them in this order: SSD,Inernal/external, and optical.

Generally, the less moving parts the better and the less you move it around the better. Disks can also get scratched or worn which can cause reduced life. Hope this helps!

500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm Hard Drive or a 128GB Solid State Drive

I know that the SSD would be faster but would a typical college student miss out on the huge loss of storage from decreasing from 500GB to just 128?

Thanks!
It’s a laptop for college and I am worried about having space for music and photos and things of the like.

Desktop or laptop?

SSD’s are really nice… If it is a desktop, why not get both, and use one for windows, and the other for storage. If it is a laptop, and you can afford the SSD, you could always do that for speed, and then get a cheap 500gb external for storage.

I accidentally deleted the earlier post…so:

"OK, I currently have an Intel 80Gb SSD installed and a boxed Intel 40Gb SSD ready for install. I am wonder if it would be wise to just put the OS on the 40Gb SSD and load programs on the 80Gb SSD. I already have 6Tb of storage space on external drives. I am NOT interested in RAID, so I am wondering if free up the OS disk might be a good idea?"

Thanks

It might, if you’re writing to the SSD. In that case, the more spare space you have, the longer your write speeds will stay high.

If you’re using the SSDs in the ideal way, for reading static system files and running programs, there won’t be any difference in which SSD you use for the OS.

I would like to use a laptop as a portable digital audio workstation and would like to run a Solid State Drive and a Standard Drive for storage.
HP Pavilion DV9620us has three things going against it: No longer available; AMD; Terrible Reviews. Thanks though.

yes, most of the gateway FX series have dual hard drive slots capable of raid 0 or 1. I run my gateway fx laptop with dual ssd in a striped raid. Runs avid media composer pretty well and before i bought the hard drives it only cost 1000 bucks (good price for a avid media composer computer) Some of the widows have 3 slots and can handle raid 5. (not good for digital audio since your write speed is limited) Some of the real expensive asus can support 2 drives, but I am unsure if they support raid. What most editors do is have a solid state drive(or 2) in there computer and use an external for bulk storage. I’m not sure of the transfer requirements for audio, but hd video requires 200mb/s so solid state is needed. For audio you might get away with dual 7200 rpm drives. Exturnal is a better option for bult storage since laptops drives cap at 500 gb in most cases. Portable externals cap at 2tb in most cases.

I just got a new solid state drive to run windows 7 on and I’m wondering if there’s a quick way to make it so the programs can run off the other hard drive without having to install them again. Some programs open, but without their settings. For instance Firefox opens fine but acts like I just installed it and all settings are gone. Mass effect 2 won’t open because it says I don’t have a direct x driver that comes with instalation. Is there any way to copy the program settings over so I can be running windows on the new ssd but run the program from my storage drive without reinstalling all my programs? Or is windows picky about this?
Also I would like to delete windows from the storage drive to save space and streamline my boot process. what is the best way to do this?

Re-installation of Windows 7 and your applications to the SSD is the best way.

Use Windows 7’s backup program to back up an image of your SSD onto an external drive or youy HDD so in case of disaster, you can recover quite fast.

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Hi - I’ve been waiting … and waiting … for Creative, my preferred company for mobile media, to release their product in a larger size than 32 GB. It’s been over a year, and they just released the next model: same crappy storage space, more useless features! …. *crickets* … I give up.

If I can have a 256 GB thumb drive, I should be able to find a 128 GB mp3 player (one that can handle video as well, of course), even if that means giving up on Creative. Is there a product out there that meets my needs?

minimum:
128GB capacity
support mp3, wma
support some video
video-capable screen
video-output

bonus:
Bluetooth compatible (for Bluetooth headphones)
easy transfer (plug/play, drag/drop would make sense)

Thanks for your help, even if the answer is "not unless you wire up your own outputs to a flash drive"

Your talking shenanigans. There is no such thing, yet. Only the oh so amazing trendy 160GB ipod Classic. Or the 120GB Zune(wireless sync). And then there are the Archos models that come in 250GB and blah blah blah.

So in general, not unless you wire up your own outputs to a flash drive. :p

Solid State Drive (SSD)
Memory Card
USB Flash Drive, sometimes called a thumb drive

A solid-state drive (SSD) is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data. An SSD emulates a hard disk drive interface, thus easily replacing it in most applications. An SSD using SRAM or DRAM (instead of flash memory) is often called a RAM-drive, not to be confused with a RAM disk.

A memory card or flash memory card is solid-state electronic flash memory data storage device capable of storing digital contents. These are mainly used with digital cameras, handheld and Mobile computers, mobile phones, music players, digital cinematography cameras, video game consoles, and other electronics. They offer high re-record-ability, power-free storage, small form factor, and rugged environmental specifications. There are also non-solid-state memory cards that do not use flash memory, and there are different types of flash memory. Many cards incorporate wear levelling algorithms in their design

A USB flash drive consists of flash memory data storage device integrated with a USB (Universal Serial Bus) 1.1 or 2.0 interface. USB flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, much smaller than a floppy disk, and most weigh less than 30 g (1 oz).[1] Storage capacities in 2010 can be as large as 256 GB[2] with steady improvements in size and price per capacity. Some allow 1 million write or erase cycles[3][4] and have a 10-year data retention cycle

How many years will we have to wait before a storage medium better than 7200 rpm is affordable?
@kL, a 250GB SSD is $800; that costs more than a decent laptop. And if you are in video production, where you have tens of terabytes of data, you would need twenty of those just to get 4TB of storage. 4TB of storage on 1TBx7200rpm costs about $400, while 4TB on SSD would cost $16,000.

500 GB for 60 bucks or so , wow . that is cheap . I remember my first hard drive . it was the first hd for home computer . in 1981 it was 3500 bucks ! for 5MB ! now you add that on up. 500 GB is 1000 x bigger . so an equivalent drive would be 1000 x 3500 = 3,500,000 bucks for a 500 GB drive . plus inflation . Now that is a price that is high .
Oh and in 1983 if I was rich I could have bought me a Apple Lisa . Only 10,000 smackers. So i think i got a bargain on my pc i use now that i spent about 500 on .

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.