Learning and Leading - June/July 2012

BUYER’Sguide

One surefire method of ensuring a feeling of security and peace of mind is having your important documents stored in more than one location. If you or your students have ever had a computer failure at school, you know what an inconvenience it is to recreate hours of work or completely lose images and video. Frequently backing up your documents is highly recommended, and the process is becoming easier, faster, and more reliable.

With the emergence of cloud computing, many are choosing to store data on distant servers. Internet access is required, however, and limited bandwidth can slow the process down. A more conservative approach is to have at least two secondary storage options, including an external hard drive. For many years, hard disk drives (HDDs) have been the storage solution of choice. Speed, size, and reliability have continually improved, but solid-state drives (SSDs) are growing in popularity because of their durability, speed, energy efficiency, and quiet operation.

Durability

HDDs can fail because their mechani-
cal components, the rapidly rotating
discs and moving read/write heads,
are subject to wear. A flash-based SSD
has no moving parts to wear out. It
can withstand vibration, extreme tem-
peratures, and even the shock from
dropping to the floor. Many SSDs can
withstand a drop of 10 feet or more.
The ioSafe Rugged Portable line of
SSDs includes a titanium-shelled drive
with underwater immersion protec-
tion up to 30 feet for three days. Many
companies back up their products by
offering to recover data that has been
lost, which is often an expense of sev-
eral thousand dollars.

Impressive Speed Speed is a key element when transferring data, and Thunderbolt is the newest, fastest interface available that supports data transfer speeds never before available in portable and desk-top drives. Elgato and LaCie have produced portable SSDs using Thunderbolt technology, and other companies will have Thunderbolt models by the end of 2012. Thunderbolt is more than twice as fast as a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 and makes Firewire transfers seem slow. Macintosh includes a Thunderbolt port in its latest computers, and PCs are beginning to include them. Microsoft is developing Windows 8 support for Thunderbolt. Even without using Thunderbolt technology, however, an SSD has a much shorter data access time than HDDs.

Quiet Operation

Because there are no moving parts, an external SSD runs very quietly. Some models, such as the Elgato, do not require a fan and operate silently. This is particularly helpful in a small meeting, as a whirring sound could be distracting and could compromise audio quality during recording.

To ensure your data is preserved, use the incremental backup and automatic scheduling available with your software. The cost per GB of storage is higher for SSDs than for HDDs, but if you are looking for a rugged drive and a quick, quiet method for backing up your data, consider an external SSD.