Drives for data portability

Are you hitting the road to another city? Do you need to work on projects while you are at home? Do you present workshops in the Technology Enhanced Classrooms?

What's the best way to have what you need where you need it? When will a shared network drive give you everything you need? How about Zip drives? When is CDRW the right choice? How about those new USB drives? Will they work?

First we'll describe each of these technologies and then list when each of them is most appropriate.

Network shared drives
As a member of the UW-River Falls community, you will have one or more network accounts. These accounts may give you access to various network drives. Some of these are for your own use and some you may share with others. Examples are the FalconFile Dept and Home volumes (G: and H: in Windows). These are available from almost any campus networked computer. Network drives are equally readable by Macintosh and Windows computers, though some file formats will not be compatible between platforms.

CD-RW drive
These drives will read CD Rom disks and can also write to CDR and CDRW disks. CDR disks are can be written to just once, but the media is less than a dollar per disk and can be read in almost any CD Rom player you will find. CDRW can be written to over and over, but the disks are more expensive and can only be read by a few drives - typically DVD or other CDRW drives.

DVD/CD-RW combo drive
These drives have the capabilities of a CD-RW drive combined with the ability to read DVD-ROM disks.

DVD +-RW drive
Many new computer lab, TEC and faculty/staff computers are being ordered with this drive option. These drives can read and write both CDs and DVDs. DVDs hold more than seven times as much data as CDs - 4.5Gb vs. 650Mb. Blank DVDs are more expensive than blank CDs, and can be read on fewer computers, but the cost is actually less when you consider capacity. DVD drives are becoming the accepted standard for computer optical storage. DVD R media is can be written to only once, whereas DVD RW media can be written to multiple times. Also similarly, the DVD RW media is more expensive and cannot be read in as many computers. There are two competing formats for DVDs, DVD +R and DVD -R. Some drives can only create one type and some can create either. When buying media, purchase the type required by your DVD RW drive.

Zip drive
Once a campus standard, this format is no longer recommended.

USB Flash drive
Flash drives allow you to store data on a pocket-knife-sized device with no moving parts. You plug it into a USB port on any computer and it will appear as a new drive. Use it as you would any hard drive. Windows 2000, Windows XP, and MacOS X computers automatically sense these devices when plugged into a USB port. Windows 98 computers will need a driver (supplied with the drive) and MacOS 9.x computers may work automatically or made need an Apple driver installed. The bottom line is that for the newer operating system, these are very much plug it in and use it. For older operating systems you may need to do a bit to make the drive work. The capacity of the drives is from 32MB to at least 8GB. The price varies accordingly.

IT Services recommendations
Each of these storage technologies has strengths and weaknesses. The following table lists our recommendations for various needs.

If you want to order one of the above for a University-owned computer, IT Services can help. Just send us a workstation trouble report. Tell us what you want, the six-digit account number we can charge, and any pre-order questions you may have. Let us know if you want a quote of the cost before we order. We do not charge for installation.

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Last modified: July 09, 2008