Storage On The Go

Increasingly, people use and need large amounts of computer storage. With the advent of online video stores that will allow you to buy and download movies, the need increases ever more. What happens though when you want to carry your media and other files from one machine, or from one room (or even building) to another?

The answer is portable data storage, and there are several varieties available. One of the most commonly used and most portable is the USB flash drive.

These small storage units may be very small-tiny enough in fact to fit on a keyring, or in a pocket. It

makes them ideal as portable storage, however their tiny size means that they are limited in the amount that they can carry. Typically they start at very small sizes and go up to 32gb at a reasonable price. There are also very large USB flash drives available at 128gb and 256gb, but the cost rises drastically and is likely to be prohibitive for many when there are alternative storage methods available.

Some are stronger than others, and in fact some may be built especially to be strong. They can be waterproof, and sealed tight against dirt, as well as being able to withstand electrical shocks that might otherwise degrade the data that is stored on the flash drive. These are ideal for loading up with music or movies and throwing in a pocket or bag, without you having to worry much about how well they will cope with being knocked about.

If you need a larger amount of storage then you will need an external hard drive. These may hold more than a terabyte of data, but you pay for the storage capacity by trading for a larger size. They may hold a small, laptop sized hard drive inside them, or may have a full size drive. The smaller drives may be as small or smaller than a paperback book. The larger drives are more like a stack of three books.

Drives such as these need power in order to run. Smaller drives may be able to run off your laptop's power, taking it through the USB cable that also carries the data. This will work as long as you plug it into a powered USB port.

The larger drives are more power hungry and take more than USB can provide. They need an external power supply, which means being plugged into a wall outlet. This means that although they are technically portable, they only give you a way to carry data from one place to another-you cannot use them easily on the move unless you have the means to plug them in.

Though these newer methods of storage have tended to supersede them, there also remains the older types of storage. CD and DVD ROM discs will hold generally less information but may be re-writable in the same way and allow easy transport without the need for a power source. There are now storage solutions to suit all needs, for a relatively low cost.