Storing files on your PC

In the olden days, when the capacity of your hard disk was measured in megabytes rather than gigabytes, it was easy to keep track of all the files on your PC and an entire hard disk could be backed up onto a handful of floppies.

However, while managing your files may have been a fairly painless process, saving a couple of image files on your computer would leave your hard disk gasping for breath.

These days, even mid-range PCs come equipped with pretty roomy hard disks. Yet somehow, the bigger the hard disk, the easier it seems to fill it.

Digital photographs, MP3s and digital video clips gobble up hard disk space at an alarming rate and, when you add Word documents, spreadsheets, presentations and games to the mix, your PC may seem as if it's bursting at the seams.

If you want to free some storage space, make backup copies of your files, or you simply find it easier to store certain types of file on removable media, there are a number of options open to you. Let us explain ...

File your photos
Digital photographs, like hard disks, get bigger each year. This is because digital cameras are now capable of taking better quality pictures than ever before and, subsequently, produce much larger image files.

If your collection of digital photographs runs into hundreds or even thousands of images, you will have noticed that a sizeable chunk of your hard disk has already disappeared.

When it comes to storing digital photos the CD is the undisputed king. With a capacity of 650-800MB, you can store hundreds of high-resolution images on a single disc. CDs also have the added advantage of being relatively cheap and because most PCs now come equipped with a CD recorder you won't have to fork out for any extra hardware.

Don't worry if you haven't upgraded your computer recently and don't have a recordable CD drive; you can pick up an external unit that plugs into a USB or FireWire port on your PC for around £100.

Showing off
If you don't simply want to dump your images on a CD, you can download software such as Photo2VCD, which costs $30 (approximately £18), to organise your photos into slide shows before you save them to disc.

You should be able to play your slide shows, complete with their own soundtrack, on most domestic DVD players as well as on your computer. Bear in mind, though, that CDs are not indestructible. They are easily scratched and are prone to degradation if not stored in the right conditions.

For this reason they should always be stored in their plastic cases or on plastic spindles when not in use and kept at room temperature.

Iomega's Zip Drive provides another easy way to store digital photographs. Little bigger than a standard floppy disk, Zip disks are reusable and come in three sizes: 100MB, 250MB and 750MB.

Zip drives are reasonably priced, varying from £60 to around £160, and even the largest digital photograph collection can be comfortably squeezed on to half a dozen or so Zip disks. A 10-pack of 750MB Zip disks will set you back about £94.

Manage your music files
We've already shown you how to convert your old vinyl albums and audio cassettes to MP3 files. You may also have been busy converting your CD collection to MP3 or another digital audio file format such as Ogg Vorbis or WMA.

These can take up a fair amount of hard disk space and anyone who has converted their collection of albums to digital format will testify that it can be a time consuming business. For this reason alone, it is advisable to keep backup copies of all your music tracks.

Once again the CD comes out on top when it comes to storing audio files. Most of us are already familiar with CDs and you can store up to 10 hours of music on a single disc. If you save your MP3s on CD, you should be able to play your tracks on many domestic DVD players, as well as some portable CD players and, of course, your PC.

Alternatively, you could save your music files on a DVD, which offers more than 4GB of storage space, the equivalent of several thousand MP3s.

Not all PCs feature a recordable DVD drive, though, and it takes much longer to record on a DVD than a CD. With some of the bigger brands charging £2-£5 per disc, creating your own DVDs can quickly become a very expensive hobby.

Cheaper, non-brand DVDs are available, however, and you can pick up an external recordable DVD drive for about £220 or an internal one for less than £150.

Video stars
Home movies shot using a digital video (DV) camcorder are also pretty demanding: a single hour of DV footage will take up around 2GB. Once again, DVD is an ideal medium to use to take some of the strain off your hard disk and offers a number of storage options to the movie maker.

As a simple archiving medium, the DVD can store approximately two hours of digital video in standard DV format. For a more professional touch, software such as Nero 6 Ultra Edition allows you to create DVDs with interactive menus that can be played on domestic DVD players. You can download a copy for $70 (about £41).

If you don't need the large storage capacity of a DVD, the CD is a viable alternative. Again, packages such as Nero 6 allow you to create a special type of CD known as VideoCD (VCD), which can store up to 74 minutes of full-motion video on a standard disc.

VCDs can be played on your computer or on domestic DVD players with quality that rivals VHS. If you're after really high quality video, turn your attention to the Super VideoCD (SVCD) format. With this format you can store 35-60 minutes of higher quality video which, to the naked eye, is difficult to tell apart from a normal DVD.

There is a time consideration, however, and it would be wise to bear in mind that in order to create a VCD or SVCD, you must first convert your DV footage to MPEG2 format. Burning software, such as Nero 6 Ultra Edition, will do this automatically, but even the fastest computers can take hours to create a single VCD.

Storing smaller documents
Smaller files created in applications such as Word or Excel are unlikely to drain your hard disk but, if you want to back them up or store sensitive documents away from a shared computer, there are a number of other storage solutions.

The floppy disk may seem archaic alongside newer, higher capacity storage media but, as most of us still have a floppy disk drive on our PC, floppies can't be ruled out altogether. With a storage capacity of only 1.44MB, though, the floppy disk is only handy for storing a few files such as Word and Excel documents.

USB removable storage devices may be newcomers to the data storage arena, but they are quickly becoming a very popular means of storing files. No bigger than a key ring, they connect directly to your computer's USB port and offer up to 256MB of storage space.

This may not seem like much, however USB storage devices are a means of carrying files to and from the office rather than a format for storing backups on.

The whole caboodle
If you want to back up an entire hard disk or you need to add a serious amount of storage space to your PC, you may want to consider an external hard disk, which hooks up to your PC via a USB or FireWire port.

You can opt for a portable hard disk such as LaCie's Pocket Drive, which offers up to 80GB of storage space and will set you back £304, or a heftier unit that can be permanently hooked up to your PC.

You'll get more storage from the latter. The LaCie Big Disk, for example, is pricey at £586, but offers a whopping 500GB of storage space, enough to store two whole days' worth of high-quality digital video.

Storage solutions
We all know that we should back up important files and folders regularly. Storing files on removable media or an external hard disk also has the added advantage of freeing up valuable hard disk space on your PC. As we've just seen, the good news is that there's a storage option out there to suit everyone and every file.

Online storage
If your PC doesn't have a recordable CD or DVD drive installed and you're not keen to spend a lot of money on additional hardware - or simply don't like the idea of storing files on a tiny USB drive that may get lost - there is an online solution to your file storage needs.

For under £6 per month you can rent up to 100MB of virtual hard disk space from the likes of Xdrive.com, which you can access securely over the internet using a password and user identification. Uploading files is a doddle, as you can browse the contents of your hard disk online, just as you would on your PC, and select files to transfer to your online storage space.

You'll need a fast internet connection to get the best out of this service as transferring larger files over a slow connection can be a pain, but the big advantage is that you can access your files from any computer with an internet connection.

If you need to access a document from your computer in the office and from your home PC, this can be especially useful and you can also store documents online to access when you're abroad.

Xdrive is not the only online storage service around. You can get a similar service at around the same price from Freedrive, FilesAnywhere, ibackup, @backup and Netdrive and new online storage solutions are appearing all the time.

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