Storage Devices

[Synerjee]

I am sure everyone has used a storage device of some sort at one point of their lives. What do you think of them? Which types do you or have you used? USB drives? Hard drives? Do you still use them or have you switched over to the cloud? What your preferred capacity of your device(s)? How viable do you think they are? Do you think such storage devices will still be around in the future or will they be completely taken over by cloud storage? Discuss!

Also yay for first T&I thread \o/

 

[Buoysel]

Internet speeds will never be fast enough to match that of local storage, at least not in the near future. If you have to move a lot of data quickly, it's faster to mail a Hard Drive with the data on it. (see xkcd post below)

Personally I use OneDrive for backup of most of my files. I simply save all of my work into my OneDrive folder. I don't upload or download the data very often so it works for me. That and I have less than 30 GB of data that I keep backed up using OneDrive. I also have a Portable USB HDD that I keep a backup copy of video files on. The video files are too large for me to upload at a reasonable rate to OneDrive.

XKCD has an interesting post about the bandwidth of FedEx that is relevant. http://what-if.xkcd.com/31/

I keep all of the data I access often on an SSD, files that I do not access as often, or large files, on the internal HDD. I use the Cloud as well as an USB HDD for backup.

 

[Juno]

The only files I need to move around are usually just documents for school, and while I used to carry around a USB all the time, I started using Google Drive a while back and it's a lot more convenient imo.

I still use my USBs occasionally - sometimes I download movies onto them and plug it into my Bluray player so I can watch them on TV.

 

[Meganium]

OneDrive expanded their free storage to 15 GB. So I...uh, have 60 GB of cloud storage now so I don't really need my 160 GB external hard drive now. lmao.

I mean, I don't even store SO MUCH STUFF since the total GB would be 10. I don't download movies or anything like that. I do have pictures, but I have those stored in an image hosting account, or facebook. So at this time I am relying on cloud storage, but I do play it safe by backing everything up on my external.

 

[Starry Windy]

Lately I prefer external hard drive storage like Spectra Flash, and I preferred using this over cloud storage like Onedrive just because of accessibility. And I sometimes used USB flash disk as well when it's needed to transfer some files to the other PC.

 

[Pendraflare]

I have used memory sticks for portable storage to transfer things from computers. I did have an external hard drive to transfer some stuff from my old computer to this MacBook, and on hold after my former had a virus way back. It would be something i'd want to hold onto if I ever wanted to make videos.

 

[Reyzadren]

I keep all my fun stuff in a flash drive, and work files in another smaller one. For the bigger video collection of movies and tv shows, I use an external hard drive instead.

 

[Tsutarja]

I have a few USB thumb drives lying around, all Sandisk. I have 2 16GB flash drives, 1 4GB flash drive and 1 2GB flash drive. I also have a 1TB external HDD from Seagate that I only use occasionally.

 

[Sylphiel]

My storage device of choice right now is the 300-gig external hard drive I have. I mostly have stuff on there just as backup (I've used it to retrieve files from older systems), although I do actually use it occasionally when I need/want to move files between my two computers. I also have a flash drive that I think still works, amazingly enough, although I wouldn't try using it much...

Never thought to try cloud storage. Admittedly, I also feel like I wouldn't be able to trust it enough (or maybe I'd be worried I'd forget about it at some point? I dunno), so I'm not sure how willing I'd be to go for it. For what I do though, that hard drive I have seems to be more than enough for now, so I'll just stick with that.

 

[Racket]

If you have important stuff, you'll always want to back it up.

Currently have an external 500GB (made fron an old hdd I've had kicking around). Using it with an incremental backup solution that I'm still hacking togeather in perl.

 

[Hiatus]

Usually, I have everything stored within my internal hard-drive. Though, lately, I've been starting to dislike that, sort of, because in some way, it does make things sort of a hassle. When you've got important files saved and wish to format your computer, re-install your system, or perform any other action of the like, you'd have to back these things up somewhere so that you don't lose them. If you don't happen to have anything (USB or memory card, for example), it could definitely be stressful. I've been in this position a few times before, and know how it feels.

I've been planning to keep some documents in USB-drives, but unfortunately, I'm afraid of having them lost; used to have a couple of drives, but wound up losing them both. Same goes for memory cards. Would start using cloud-storage, but sadly, I'm not too used to it as of yet; it'll take some time. I've heard that you're able to have some folder in your desktop which would sync to cloud services directly, but I haven't looked into them. Will do it at some point, though, if I remember!

 

[Racket]

Usually, I have everything stored within my internal hard-drive. Though, lately, I've been starting to dislike that, sort of, because in some way, it does make things sort of a hassle. When you've got important files saved and wish to format your computer, re-install your system, or perform any other action of the like, you'd have to back these things up somewhere so that you don't lose them. If you don't happen to have anything (USB or memory card, for example), it could definitely be stressful. I've been in this position a few times before, and know how it feels.

I've been planning to keep some documents in USB-drives, but unfortunately, I'm afraid of having them lost; used to have a couple of drives, but wound up losing them both. Same goes for memory cards. Would start using cloud-storage, but sadly, I'm not too used to it as of yet; it'll take some time. I've heard that you're able to have some folder in your desktop which would sync to cloud services directly, but I haven't looked into them. Will do it at some point, though, if I remember!

If you wanted to avoid losing data while re-installing your system, you could set up 2 partitions. One for the system and programs, and another for all of your data. That way you can just format and reinstall operating system X on the first partition while leaving your data intact. I would suggest taking it a step further and backing up your data partition if the information is non-trivially reproducable.

If you only have a little bit of data, USB's or DVD's might be ok. If you have a lot of data, external hard disks will probably be cheaper. If you have 10's of terabytes, then you might consider using tapes for cost effectiveness.

I have mixed feelings about cloud backup. I feel like it might work better if your a company, or if you have a smaller number of files. But I don't trust that I always have a fast internet connection available (or any availible for that matter) for the amount of stuff I have backed up.

 

[Lusus]

I use my USB to store and backup anything important. It's only 3GB big, but i only use roughly 1GB of it.

 

[Sheep]

I have like six 4GB Kingston USB drives given to me at college so those I use for smaller files. Most of the time I hardly put them to use nowadays, though, since I tend to forget what holds what and am too lazy to label. >_>;

So all of my important files sit in my lovely 500GB Seagate external drive. I hardly use much space so there isn't a need for me to store a lot anywhere either way - the Seagate is 99% anime series, haha. And even then it's maybe 50GB full?

 

[obZen]

I have like six 4GB Kingston USB drives given to me at college so those I use for smaller files.

What! Where did you go for that?



Some things I have on the cloud. Quick-access documents for school are all on OneDrive (like syllabus). Dropbox has my school schedules, calendars, maps for the NYC ferries, trains, and buses.

I have an external HDD 1TB, an 8GB flash drive, and a 4GB flash drive on my keychain for quick swaps on and off of school computers.

 

[SparklingMistral]

I mostly just leave things on my desktop. Every once in a while, I'll back things up onto an external hard drive I have, but usually only when I get new music from iTunes. Keeps it from being such a hassle of transferring it all over to a new computer whenever I'll have to do that again.

I use a flash drive for school things so that it's in two places in case something happens to it in one place, I have it elsewhere. I used to use a flash drive for home, but I got tired of using it & it was dying, so I just transferred everything to my desktop & I save everything there instead.