Backup Trends: Media

This section is an attempt to quickly summarize the past and future of the entire range of backup media. Looking at the past can at least be argued on the facts; looking into the future is, of course, pure speculation, and not something human beings have traditionally predicted with much accuracy.

Floppies

During the life of microcomputers, floppies have traditionally played the role that tape played for mainframes. Floppies evolved several significant improvements, from ???, to 5 1/4 inch floppies to 3.5" 1.2MB rigid form factor. Unfortunately, that is where floppy evolution ceased, leaving them a dead branch on the evolutionary tree of backup media.

Floppy drives are quite inexpensive (less than $20 retail in 2004), but computer manufactureres operate on thin margins, and have therefore been motivated to start offering computers without floppy drives.

The Backup Critic advises against abandoning floppies entirely just yet. You may still encounter programs or data that arrives in floppy form. While it might make sense to order a notebook without a floppy drive, since space is always at a premium there, most desktop computers have plenty of space in their form factor, so it hardly makes sense to forego the insurance of having a floppy drive when you need it just to save $20.

CD-ROMs

CD-ROMs have been fairly constrained from increases in capacity by their very specification. Another way to look at it is this: you can get new high-capacity CD-ROMs -- they're just called DVDs. Initially a luxury for PCs, in 2004 it's hard (and usually a mistake) to buy a PC or notebook that does not have a CD-ROM drive (unless it's because it has a combination CD-ROM/DVD drive instead).

While CD-ROM capacity has remained static at ???, CD-ROM speed has proven fertile ground for competition. In fact, the speed at which CD-ROMs can be read and written seems to have reached physical limitations of the media. In 2004, you could buy a ??X speed CD-ROM. At much higher speeds than that, an unpleasant problem arises: the actual disc may begin to shatter and fly apart into high-speed projectiles.

CD-ROMs have become the backup media of choice for most home computers.

Speed versus SizeMedia QualityBackup Trends