A marketing manager of a logistics company was invited by a leading industry body to talk about emerging trends in logistics management. He prepared a Power Point presentation, and copied it onto a floppy disk. To his horror when the floppy was inserted in a PC wired to an OHP in the venue, it said, ‘corrupt disk’. With no backup of the presentation at his disposal, the embarrassed executive apologized and spoke about general trends in the field. Instances such as these reinforce the need for reliable, removable storage medias. Floppy disks once considered a boon have now become an unreliable backup option. Moreover, even when compressed, it can store only up to 1.7MB of data. Floppy disks hence have become irrelevant because today’s data intensive applications demand higher removable storage capacities. What users today need is a higher capacity, reliable removable mass storage technology to transport and backup data. However when looking at an alternative for floppy disks, three technologies lead the pack—Zip, CDR and Tape Drive.

Zipping ahead
According to IDC, "Zip technology occupies 87% of the low end magnetic market which consists of high capacity flexible removable cartridge drives. The zip drives which comes in various capacities—100MB to 750MB are seen as an ideal solution for mobile professionals. One of the biggest advantages of Zip drive is that they are very easy to use, since it is built on the USB standard. Also with the commercialization of USB 2.0 by many PC vendors, the data throughput speeds have reached new heights. Given this, Zip drives offer immense value in terms of plug and play, portability, and usage. A CooperComm report on Zip usage says that a majority of the Fortune 1000 companies use Zip drives mainly because they are satisfied with its ease of use and installation.

Optical media
Competing with Zip drives are CDR and CDRWs. This technology has an edge when it comes to cost. Both CDR and CDRW discs provide over 600MB of storage at a very low media cost. Moreover CDR disks can be read by any CDROM drive. The present trend indicates that the preferred removable media in the optical storage market is the CDR disks. Despite it being a write-once media, the low cost coupled with higher capacity makes it popular vis-à-vis CDRW disks. Market reports say that 97% of the disks sold in the past two years are CDRs.

Tape Drive
While Zip and CDRs are aimed at the individual user, the tape drive addresses the removable storage needs of the SME’s. With the HDD capacities going up, the need for a larger capacity, removable storage has become a necessity. For instance a tape drive allows the user to store the entire data from the HDD to a single removable data cartridge that has as much as 20 GB in capacity. Tape drive technology since its introduction in the 1980’s has emerged into a major enterprise removable storage standard. Also the industry’s leading OEM’s have adopted this as a standard backup option for entry-level servers.

Issues
Every removable option—individual and enterprise has its inherent issues. For instance the Zip drives despite its unique features, suffers from perception in terms of cost when compared to optical medias. Unlike CDs Zip comes preformatted and data can be written faster due to its USB capability. Moreover the optical disks due to their unprotected surface are prone to scratches and data integrity becomes questionable. Given these issues—three scenarios emerge:

Users, who want to backup their individual critical data like files, presentation and word processing applications will favor the Zip drive. The optical disk backup will be driven by the multimedia applications and by those users searching for an immediate FDD alternate. Meanwhile, tape drives, despite commanding higher upfront investment, will rule the SME space due to its very high storage capacity. So with storage becoming a mission-critical issue we have more than one option on which to place our bets.

Shrikanth G in Chennai