Gigabank question

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Uncle Vinnie

Curious- how do these i/o magic 4.0 giga-bank drives compare to a regular HD
or DVD in terms of speed...

I was thinking of backing up My docs from my pc, to use when I travel with
my laptop.. I think my laptop (HP n5445) has the older USB port, so it may
not access data as fast, but would it access data faster than if I backed up
on a CD, DVD, or even it's maxed out HD?

Thanks!
 
Uncle said:
Curious- how do these i/o magic 4.0 giga-bank drives compare to a regular HD
or DVD in terms of speed...
Click to expand...

For archival purposes you want a media and drive that'll be available
and supported 10 years from now. Cuz if your reader fails the last
place thing you want to do is to hunt up ebay for another one so you
can restore from your media.

DVD's will be here that long, and so will USB/firewire hard drives.
 
Good point, thank you....

But how do these compare in terms of speed... for instance, if I am working
with someone and I want to access jpegs or Excel/Word docs - are the
Gigabanks faster than CD's or DVD's?
 
Uncle said:
Good point, thank you....

But how do these compare in terms of speed... for instance, if I am working
with someone and I want to access jpegs or Excel/Word docs - are the
Gigabanks faster than CD's or DVD's?
Click to expand...

Gigabanks: 3-6MB/s (average 4.5)

http://www.iomagic.com/Gigabank/index.asp

CDs are a bit tricky. Since they have that multiplier thing going on.

1X=~160KB/s

DVD

1X=~1.3MB/s

So about the same as a 4X DVD or 36X CD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-R
 
Thank you for all your help!

I originally went to Iomagic's website and did see the speeds... but your
comparison below and some of the additional links, did a much better job of
clearing things for me... makes more sense...also, sometimes thinks look
great on paper, but in a real application, well, sometimes those same things
just look better on paper!

Thank you again!
 
Good point, thank you....

But how do these compare in terms of speed... for instance, if I am working
with someone and I want to access jpegs or Excel/Word docs - are the
Gigabanks faster than CD's or DVD's?
Click to expand...


They should be faster yes, especially in latency.

However, overall there is a much better choice, the same
sized flash memory based storage. A thumbdrive or an SD
card with corresponding reader have both dropped in price
quite a bit over the last year, 4GB of flash is now under
$100, and unlike the mini hard drives it can be dropped, put
through a washing machine or dropped into your coffee and
expected to still work. Their latency is even lower too,
but the sustained write speed isn't as good. For your
described uses, JPEG or Excel/etc, write speed probably
isn't very important except for that first time you transfer
everything over to it.
 
Thanks kony...

I have not yet seen flash drives (SD/USB) over 1 gig- maybe it's because I
have not been looking - I have noticed the gigabanks dropping tremendously
lately- I also noticed when researching that they are mini-drives... 4200
speed, etc... which I had not been aware of....I would prefer Flash type- no
moving parts, etc, although I wouldn't test it in the washing machine!

I'll take a peek.. the problem I have is that my laptop has a small drive
and I have a lot of junk... My Docs is over 12 gig... and it barely fits
when transferring.. so I might transfer some, keeping certain folders on
DVD's...art/design folders, certain customer folders, etc..

I have peeked into getting a new drive but laptop drives have not dropped as
cheaply as desktop and the install is not as easy in terms of copying and
moving data...

So this has been a decent workaround for me... DVD's do last a long time but
with all the sales, they serve as a temporary means....
 
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