Sorting out storage options

[d-willett]

Hey all - new here. My question involvs removable storage media. Is there really a whole lot of difference between a dedicated internal hard drive, an external hard drive, a USB jump drive, & various sticks or flash media? I just purchased a new laptop & installed a 7200 RPM hard drive, but purposfully got one on the smaller side (60 gig). My thinking is to keep the applications I use on the internal hard drive, and keep my data (audio, video, PP presentations, etc...) on removable/portable drives. I use multiple different computers at work. My current thinking is that SD cards (or something similar) are the way to go. What are the potential drawbacks from keeping data on SD cards? Are there any speed issues when comparing cards to cd/dvd's or external hard drives? Thanks in advance for your time and expertise.

 

[nobly]

Flash media is limited to the number of times the data can be rewritten. It can be from 100,000 times to 10,000 times, or whatever. Its usually stated on the package somewhere... That is the only drawback I can think of (assuming you got a high-speed transfer one, and you have access to a USB 2.0 flash reader on each computer for SD/CF/MMC/etc)

External HDD's are still HDD's, and are suspectible to damage when dropped, immersed in water, kicked, thrown, etc. The risk to your data is higher because of physical issues. Typically you'll have to lug a power brick along as well. But its not a bad way to go.

The internal HDD will be faster in terms of performance, etc, but as long as your data isn't too huge, you might not notice any difference.

Optical media can typically have a slower read/write performance vs flash drives. (key word is typically) It stores alot more on DVD for a cheaper price. But you'll have to burn, and that takes time. Take CDs, 52x read is about 7.8MB/s, DVDs at 16x is about 22MB/s. But every second lost burning is more data transfer lost to flash which can probably surpass 16x DVD for reading (I haven't kept up lately).

If your computers are all on the same network, it might just be easier to have a NAS, or use a computer as a central storage point. No lugging around of objects and no worrying about having everything... Of course, making backups would be advisable.

 

[d-willett]

Thanks for the fast replies. I had no idea that flash cards had a "limit" to the number of rewrites.