storage devices | DataRecoveryUnion.com

Guest post by: Peter Lee @ Computer How To Guide

Solid State Drives (SSD) are storage devices like that of Hard Disc Drives or HDDs. But, the technology used is considerably different. The SSDs do not, like in the case of HDDs and other magnetic storage media, use movable heads and instead use non volatile micro memory chips for storage.

Performance Advantage
Solid State Drives are faster when compared to the traditional Hard Disc Drives. The performance advantage can be attributed to various factors which affect the speed of accessing the information from the disc.
To understand the intricacies involved in the process of computing data, let us first try and understand the way a computer processes data, in brief.

How Data Is Computed
One needs to understand that all the data that is processed by the computer is only done in its RAM i.e. Random Access Memory, which is a volatile storage device. When a request is sent to the computer, it needs to fetch the operands (the variables that are required in the computation) from the non volatile storage and then send it to the RAM, where the request is processed.

The performance of the auxiliary storage device, in this case HDD or SSD, depends on how fast it can retrieve the information and send it to the primary storage i.e. the RAM.

Factors Affecting Performance
There are two factors that affect this time. One is the access time and the other is the latency.

Latency
Latency, in case of HDDs, is the amount of time that is required by the read/write head to position itself to the sector where the information is available.

Access Time
Access time, which includes latency, is the total amount of time that is required to access the information.

SSD vs HDD
Comparing SSD with HDD, we can say that the access time and latency of SSDs are much lower than those of HDDs, thus giving it a performance advantage. This could be attributed to the lack of a moving head in the SSDs.

Durability
HDDs have a read/write head which moves at 5000 to 7000 rpm (revolutions per minute). The read/write head is the most susceptible part of the HDDs, leading to head crash, which may prove fatal to your data. Though there are other ways in which a HDD may crash, a head crash is the most common and it results in the loss of your data. Data recovery techniques are extremely expensive and it advisable to avoid losing data.

Cost Comparison
SSDs were a lot expensive when they first rolled in. There has been a considerable decrease in the prices of the SSDs. Though there has been a decrease in the cost of these devices, SSDs are still costly.

Although the prices of SSDs and HDDs are comparable, the effective price of the device per one gigabyte of storage in case of SSDs is much higher than the price per GB in case of HDDs i.e. you could get a 500 GB hard disc for $100 whereas you’d only 60GB SSD for $100.

Is SSD The Future Of Storage?
Both, yes and no. While SSDs are fast compared to HDDs, they are expensive. SSDs have almost reached their threshold price i.e. cost reduction in case of SSDs is hard, if not impossible.
HDDs, on the other hand, have been evolving and their speeds have considerably increased.
HDDs can be used in arrays called the redundant array of inexpensive discs (RAID), by connecting them in a form of arrays. This technique, though, may seem somewhat unachievable by the masses, is quite common in the computing field and in fact, is easy. It offers higher speeds, more reliability as there are multiple devices in which your data is stored.

Recommendation
As the SSDs are expensive, it would be better if they are used wisely. Also, there is a lot of demand for storage today. So, it would be advisable to have an SSD as well as a HDD. The SSD can be for the OS and other installation files, and the hard disc can be used for storing content like audio and video files. By having this combination of storage drives, you can even format your drives separately, not worrying about your data.

This way, you would save money while having faster accessible speeds.

Data Storage

Storage for Beginners

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM13 years ago4 years ago07 mins

Some of us are old enough to remember when floppy disks were the most popular way to store and transport data. It was a risky business: extreme heat, scratching, exposure to magnets or rough treatment could damage or erase the disk. College students, IT consultants and businesspeople everywhere would hold their breaths, push a floppy into the drive and hope that their disk wasn’t corrupted. Data storage in the old days was stressful, unreliable and depending on how many disks you needed for all your data, expensive.

Technology has advanced exponentially since the days of floppy disks and zip drives, and storing your data has never been easier. Flash drives and writable CD’s make it fast and easy to store large amounts of data and take them anywhere. And cloud drives let people access their data from literally anywhere, without the worry of storage or damage.

Flash drives
Small and portable, these drives use flash memory to store gigs of data on a tiny device. Flash drives plug right into a computer’s USB port and can be removed, rewritten and erased with ease. They’re perfect for school work and papers, since you can take them to your school’s library and print out what you need.

Flash drives are also great for online university students who tend to be more mobile and need the ability to take their data anywhere. But they’re not damage-proof: bending the USB plug and a limited number of read/erase cycles make flash drives less than a perfect storage choice.

CD’s and DVD’s and external hard drives
CD’s and DVD’s bridge the gap between floppy disks and flash drives, because they’re portable and easy to use. Both CD’s and DVD’s are easily readable by any computer with a CD-ROM drive, and DVD-R’s can hold more than four gigs of data. They’re perfect for program and software backups. But dust, heat, scratches and fingerprints can affect their performance or damage them. Also be sure to choose rewriteable CD’s and DVD’s if you want to use them more than once.

External hard drives work just like the hard drive in your computer except you connect your external HD and your computer through a USB port. Advantages to an external hard drive include the ability to store a great amount of data and security from viruses since it’s not constantly connected to your computer. But hard drives are sensitive creatures, so handle your drive carefully and be sure not to drop it or jostle it.

Cloud storage/e-mail
Cloud storage has become the latest trend for both businesses and individuals, in part because of its easy access and security. Services like Dropbox and Amazon’s Cloud Drive offer a decent amount of space for free, and you can buy more space for an affordable price. There are caveats to storing all of your data on a cloud. Read terms of services carefully before uploading, since some companies reserve the right to access—or even use–your files.

Cloud storage isn’t foolproof either: recent power outages for Microsoft and Amazon made data inaccessible for an uncomfortable amount of time. And if you’re a student who’s working on a term paper or a business that relies on a cloud drive to keep records secure, any outage is uncomfortable.

Choosing a main storage method for your data depends on your needs, so choose what works best for you. Also be sure to choose—and maintain—regularly scheduled backups. If you use a cloud for your everyday storage needs, make sure you’re aware of any changes in terms of use agreements or storage limits since cloud services can change their terms at will. There’s no storage method that’s completely safe, but making sure your data is safe should be your first priority.

Data Storage

Physical Storage Devices Overview

DATARECOVERYUNION.COM15 years ago4 years ago14 mins

1. Several types of data storage exist in most computer systems. They vary in speed of access, cost per unit of data, and reliability.

* Cache: most costly and fastest form of storage. Usually very small, and managed by the operating system.

* Main Memory (MM): the storage area for data available to be operated on.

General-purpose machine instructions operate on main memory.
Contents of main memory are usually lost in a power failure or “crash”.
Usually too small (even with megabytes) and too expensive to store the entire database.

* Flash memory: EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory).

Data in flash memory survive from power failure.
Reading data from flash memory takes about 10 nano-secs (roughly as fast as from main memory), and writing data into flash memory is more complicated: write-once takes about 4-10 microsecs.
To overwrite what has been written, one has to first erase the entire bank of the memory. It may support only a limited number of erase cycles ( tex2html_wrap_inline570 to tex2html_wrap_inline572 ).
It has found its popularity as a replacement for disks for storing small volumes of data (5-10 megabytes).

* Magnetic-disk storage: primary medium for long-term storage.

Typically the entire database is stored on disk.
Data must be moved from disk to main memory in order for the data to be operated on.
After operations are performed, data must be copied back to disk if any changes were made.
Disk storage is called direct access storage as it is possible to read data on the disk in any order (unlike sequential access).
Disk storage usually survives power failures and system crashes.

* Optical storage: CD-ROM (compact-disk read-only memory), WORM (write-once read-many) disk (for archival storage of data), and Juke box (containing a few drives and numerous disks loaded on demand).

* Tape Storage: used primarily for backup and archival data.

Cheaper, but much slower access, since tape must be read sequentially from the beginning.
Used as protection from disk failures!

2. The storage device hierarchy is presented in Figure 10.1, where the higher levels are expensive (cost per bit), fast (access time), but the capacity is smaller.

Figure 10.1: Storage-device hierarchy

3. Another classification: Primary, secondary, and tertiary storage.
1. Primary storage: the fastest storage media, such as cash and main memory.
2. Secondary (or on-line) storage: the next level of the hierarchy, e.g., magnetic disks.
3. Tertiary (or off-line) storage: magnetic tapes and optical disk juke boxes.
4. Volatility of storage. Volatile storage loses its contents when the power is removed. Without power backup, data in the volatile storage (the part of the hierarchy from main memory up) must be written to nonvolatile storage for safekeeping.