I don't know about you, but my computers are starting to accumulate "stuff" at a high rate of speed. In my case, most of the stuff is digital camera images and MP3 music files. If you get into editing video at home, the amount of stuff to store grows even larger. So, it seems like a good time to checkpoint the storage scene.
Starting with the basics, it may be time to upgrade your hard drive and computer system RAM (or internal memory). The primary reason to upgrade is very simple: it's cheap. You can get new gigamongous hard drives for under $200, and RAM prices have fallen sharply lately. Obviously I can't write a cookbook on how to do this in this column, but there are many magazine articles and information on the Internet as to how to upgrade your PC. Very simply, you can usually add a second hard drive just by opening your computer, plugging in the hard drive to a spare cable connector and formatting the drive. Changing your primary hard drive is a little more difficult - you will need to first copy all your old hard drive data to the new one, and then switch them. Software is available to make the copying part easy.
Adding RAM is even easier. Most computers made recently use PC100 or PC133 type RAM memory, packaged on what are called DIMM cards. You can usually get the information on what kind of memory your computer requires from its motherboard documentation or from the system vendor. Since most PCs made recently that use PCxxx memory have 3 DIMM sockets on the motherboard, there is a pretty good chance that one or two sockets are empty. Merely plug the memory in and turn your computer back on.
If you don't want to open your computer case, or if you need portable stuff, there are other ways to add storage. You can easily add an external hard drive or removable disk. There are many such devices on the market today, usually using USB connections. These include Zip or Jaz drives from Iomega, the ORB drive from Castlewood, external writeable CD-ROM devices (CD-RW), external hard drives, and now even larger DVD like devices that can store gigabytes of information. Using these is very simple - plug the USB connector in and the devices usually look like another hard drive letter on your system. The exception is CD type devices that usually require some additional software.
Another growing segment of the storage market is the storage cards traditionally used to save digital photos (i.e. digital film) or files for portable MP3 players. These devices come in two common flavors, Compact Flash (CF) cards or Smart Media (SM) cards. (Sony also has a third, proprietary format - the Memory Stick.) Your choice of CF or SM depends on which digital camera or player you buy. Prices on these memory devices have fallen to less than $1 per megabyte. I recently bought a 128MB CF card for $109. You get adapters that allow a laptop computer with standard PC Cards (PCMCIA cards) to read CF or SM cards, or card readers that plug into standard USB connections. You can use these cards for any files, not just photos or music files.
A device called a Digital Wallet is both a USB attached hard drive, and also a reader for CF or SM cards. These are primarily used to unload photos from CF or SM cards while you are away on trips. Using a Digital Wallet means you don't have to lug a laptop computer with you.
With the availability of these large CF or SM cards, it now becomes possible to store your stuff on them instead of a floppy disk or Zip disk. A 128MB CF card is bigger than a 100MB Zip disk, much more sturdy and reliable, and about 1/4 the size.
Now if I could just take some good digital photos to store on those cards!
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport / Oak Island area. You can visit his website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail him at bsc@bobseidel.com).