Back when I began, most available micro-computers had only floppy disks for storage. Hard drives were available but they were thousands of dollars for a few megabytes (e.g. $5,000 for 8 Megs for a Tandy Model II hard disk drive in 1980.) But the programs of the day stored mostly compressed numeric data that took up only 2-4 bytes for numbers of any reasonable size, and minimal text data for comments and such. The programs worked hard at getting the maximum out of the little storage available.

Today, we deal with images, faxes, music and video on our systems. The amount of storage we use is incredible compared to that of 25 years ago - yet the cost is so minimal that many people think little of adding another 100+ Gigabytes of storage or creating a CD or DVD of their myriads of information.

This article will cover some of the options available for adding such vast amounts of storage to a home or business computer system. Other articles will go into more depth on some of the options presented here, especially for storing and cataloguing images.

I've been a photographer since before I was a teenager. My father taught me black and white darkroom technologies and techniques in the early 1960s and I've taken a huge number of photos of all kinds. I've even been paid for many, so I guess that makes me a professional (I earned much of my living for a couple of years with my camera).

I have a collection of older cameras and have had my share of good quality systems, from Canon to Nikon, Pentax, etc., and have worked with 16mm and 35mm movie systems too.

More recently I've been using 8mm video as well as a number of digital "instamatics" for pictures for web sites and keepsakes; and last year purchased a Nikon D70 digital with the expectation of doing some more professional-quality work.