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ResNet Hard Drive Requirements
Shippensburg University > ResNet > Get Connected > Requirements > Hardware Requirements > Hard Drive

We strongly recommend having plenty of free space on your hard drive.  Digital music and video can consume a lot of disk storage, so if you're into digital media, having a computer with an 80 GB or larger hard drive is a great idea!

What is a Hard Drive?

Your computer's storage memory (Read Only Memory or "ROM") is used for permanent storage.
Most computers use a Hard Drive for ROM memory.
This memory is different from the "temporary" memory of your RAM.

A computer hard drive is a mechanical device that stores data.  It is made of one or more fast-spinning discs called "platters."
Fun fact: Hard drives are one of the last remaining mechanical components of a computer!

Since hard drives are mechanical devices, they do sometimes go bad.  This is often called a "hard drive crash."  If your hard drive crashes, there is a high probability that your files (including documents, photos, music, and those all-important term papers) will have been destroyed in the crash.

If your hard drive crashes, ResNet cannot assist you in recovering your data.  In most cases, the data is lost for good, but you may wish to contact the computer manufacturer or a local computer shop to see if they can assist you.

Protect yourself from a Hard Drive crash!

There's one proven way to ensure you do not lose all of your data if your computer or hard drive crashes; make backups!  Save your important files to removable media such as writable CDs, flash memory drives, or external hard drives.  Backups used to be a common use of floppy disks, but most computers no longer come with floppy drives.  Floppies are just too small and too unreliable by today's standards.

Flash memory drives (sometimes called Pen Drives, USB drives, or Thumb Drives) are very popular and very portable.  They're even available for purchase at the University Store!

You can also save all of your school-related documents on your Personal File Space!  Personal File Space offers 100 MB of network storage.  Check out the Personal File Space website for more information!

Why is more better?

The more hard drive space you have, the more programs and files you can store!