Storage for the Masses
Sun Review March 10, 2001

Floppy disks just don't cut it anymore. Now that more than 25% of Canadian Internet users have high-speed connections, and many of us are playing with our digital photo/video cameras, your hard drive space can be gobbled up in a matter of minutes. When was the last time you downloaded a file from the Internet that fit on a 1.4MB floppy disk? If your hard drive is running out of room, or you're wondering how to send Aunt Mabel a copy of your latest digital home movie, you are probably already thinking about purchasing additional storage such as a CD or DVD recorder or a Zip drive.

If you don't need gigabytes of storage space, a Zip drive (www.iomega.com) might be in order. The latest Zip 250MB drives can read and write 100MB or 250MB Zip disks and feature USB, SCSI, parallel port, internal or notebook connections. Zip disks are easy to use, 100% rewritable, portable and more resilient than CDs because they are not as sensitive to scratches, dust, and fingerprints. Zip drives cost $150-$250, and a 5-pack of 250MB Zip disks can be purchased for $70 (or 6 cents per MB).

However, the Zip's limited capacity and the ever dropping prices of CD-recorders leads me to think that Zip technology has become outdated. Most CDs can hold up to 650MB, or about 450 floppy disks worth of data. A CD-recorder or burner will allow you to quickly and easily record all your favourite songs, create mixed audio CDs, and make back-ups of your important files. CDs are portable and easy to share with your co-workers and friends, and the universality of CDs is very appealing - how many PCs don't have a CD-ROM drive these days?

So what's the difference between CD-R and CD-RW? A CD-R drive allows you to record data on a blank CD. You can record multiple times, but once the disc is full, that's it - you can't erase the data. A CD-RW drive allows you to erase and record as many times as you like. Its capacity is the same, but it allows you to erase and replace, more like a hard drive or a Zip drive. Of course one of the best features of recordable CDs of either type is that you can record music on them. If that's one of the things you plan to do, the difference between CD-R and CD-RW becomes more significant. For example, if you make a mistake when recording music on a CD-R, you can't erase your mistake and start over; you've got a $1 coaster. The cost of blanks may be another consideration: You can buy a 100-pack of CD-R blank discs for $80 while a 10-pack of CD-RW blanks will cost around $30. So you can get 3 CD-Rs for the price of one CD-RW, and just for comparison's sake, that still costs you less than one cent per MB of storage. The latest CD-recorders are of the CD-RW variety, and can cost anywhere from $140 to $500 depending on the connection type, speed and brand name.

DVD-RAM is a relatively new type of rewritable storage medium that's based on compact disc technology. But whereas a common CD can hold a maximum of 650MB of data, DVD-RAM can hold 5.2GB - about eight times as much. One of these 5.2GB discs can hold as much as 3,600 floppy disks, or to be even more sensationalist, a stack of phone books that rises 24 stories. Just remember that if you're really only interested in recording music CDs and playing them on your CD player, DVD-RAM can only be played on a DVD-ROM drive or DVD player, neither of which are as ubiquitous as CD players and CD-ROM drives on PCs.

Not everyone needs the vast storage space DVD-RAM offers. Some of us still consider a 5.2GB hard drive to be mammoth. For others, DVD-RAM is a godsend. Digital audio, animation, movie-making, network and database back-ups can require tremendous media capacity and fast read/write speeds. There's only one thing standing in DVD-RAM's way: a standards war between DVD-RAM, championed by Matshushita, and Pioneer DVD-RW and DVD+RW, backed by Sony and Phillips. It looks like DVD-RAM already has a major headstart, so this format is expected to prevail. Apple Computer (www.apple.com) is shipping a new SuperDrive with the latest G4 computers that can record both DVD-RAMs and CD-RWs, and Creative Labs (www.creative.com) offers a PC-DVD RAM 5.2GB recorder that retails for approximately $550.

Questions or comments? E-mail inge@ingenius.bc.ca or visit www.ingenius.bc.ca/webwoman.