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A computer without data to work with is useless. If it’s a Mac, all you will get his a blank screen with a little disk icon and a flashing question mark. Computers can access data from Read Only Memory (ROM) chips, which is where that flashing question mark icon is stored; from Random Access Memory (RAM) which survives only as long as the RAM chip is powered up, but for writable and durable data storage you need some sort of magnetic or optical storage medium, in practical terms either tape or disk. Tape is still used for data backups in some systems, but it is not a practical medium for working data. Back in the early days of personal computers, there were 5 1/4 inch “floppy” desks which really were floppy -- both the housing and the media. However, the first Macs in 1984 came with a 3 1/2 inch disk -- A Sony design -- with floppy media, but hard plastic housings and 400k of data capacity. That was soon doubled to 800k, and later expanded to 1.4 MB, which is still a practical limit for the standard 3 1/2 inch floppy disk. Apple began phasing out floppy disks in 1998, and it’s been several years since any new Mac shipped with a floppy drive, although external floppy drives are still available from third-party suppliers. There are several other semi-obsolete removable media drive formats like the once popular SyQuest, and several magneto optical drive formats. The Iomega Jaz format is fading in favor of that company’s newer Peerless drive format. Here’s what’s available in current Mac OS disk media: Hard Drives -. The basic data storage disk is of course your computer’s hard drive, a device with several rigid platters that spin at and high RPMs and store data of magnetically. Hard drive capacities today are gargantuan compared with those of even three or four years ago. You can also add additional hard drive capacity, either internally if your Mac (ie: G4 Tower) has extra internal drive bay capacity, or externally via your Mac’s FireWire or SCSI ports. Hard drives are durable, bootable, fast to read and write data, and relatively cheap per gigabyte of capacity. Zip Drives - The original 100 MB Zip Disk was/is sort of a floppy disk on steroids. Iomega later introduced a 250 MB version of the Zip, but Zip Drives still support the older 100 MB media as well. The Zip is extremely popular, cross-platform, and a very useful medium for transporting data between computers Peerless Drives - Iomega also offers the much higher capacity Peerless drive, which uses media that are essentially hard drive platters in a removable cartridge housing, of 10 GB or 20 GB capacity -- more than the hard drives of some recent Macs. SuperDisk - the SuperDisk from Imation was designed to compete with the ubiquitous Zip Drive, but never really caught on in a big way. However, the SuperDisk drive, which uses 120 MB media that look almost exactly like floppies, has one major advantage -- it can read and write standard 1.4 MB floppy disks if you need floppy compatibility with the PC world. Unfortunately, the SuperDisk is slow. External SuperDisk drives connect to the Mac through the USB interface. CD-ROM - the basic CD-ROM drive is now as ubiquitous as the floppy used to be, and is indispensable. Most current software comes on CDs, and of course the CD is the dominant format in recorded music. DVD - Most Macs in the days, with at least eight DVD-ROM drive, which can also read CD-ROMs. The DVD format itself is mainly used for movies, but some multimedia software (e.g: the Encyclopedia Britannica) is available on DVD. CD-R - These are compact disks that you can record data on using a CD burner drive. However, they are not erasable or rewritable. Many Macs come with CD-recordable drives these days, and there are dozens of third-party external CD-burner units available -- mostly FireWire, but also USB and SCSI. CD-RW - the CD-RW is similar to the CD-R except that it can be erased and rewritten. CD-RW drives are also can also read CD-ROMs, and read and write CD-Rs. DVD-RAM - This disk format is recordable and rewritable, and holds about eight times as much data as a CD-RW, but is unfortunately incompatible with regular DVD’s. Apple shipped some Macs with DVD-RAM drives, but this format did not catch on. DVD-RW - This is the format supported by Apple’s SuperDrive (not to be confused with the aforementioned SuperDisk) and several third-party drive suppliers. The DVD-RW drives can read and record CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD disks. This format is the cutting edge, at least for now, and with OS X you can use DVD-RW disks for backup media that holds up to 4.7 GB per disk. Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management. If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM
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