Coping With Inadequacy

If your micro doesn't have the horsepower you would like, an add-on -- or two, or three -- could give it the boost it needs.

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When Clarke Stephan, a vice-president at Systems Marketing Inc. (SMI), in Phoenix, bought an IBM Personal Computer 18 months ago, he thought it would suit the company's needs perfectly. The PC came with 128K of internal, or random access, memory (RAM), and two floppy disk drives, which stored 160K bytes, or characters of information, each. This capacity, Stephan figured, would be ample for creating electronic spreadsheets for his $29 million-a-year equipment leasing company But, he says, "when we found out how convenient it was and got more than one person interested in using it, we ended up overloading the thing." To handle other jobs, such as accounting and inventory management, Stephan bought another PC. Then, for $2,695, he vastly increased the capabilities of his first machine.

For that sum, he acquired a hard disk (also known as a Winchester disk), which holds 10 megabytes (10 million characters). The second computer also has a 10-megabyte (MB) disk -- and both machines have a 320K floppy drive for transferring programs to the hard disk. Now, when he tracks the items his company leases, all the information fits on one device. "The kind of database we wanted to maintain would have required 25 or 30 floppies," he says. One file, for example, containing details on every piece of equipment SMI has out on lease, takes up nearly 2 million bytes. "That would be impossible to manage on a floppy-disk system," he adds.

Stephan's dilemma -- and its solution -- are far from unique. Some 95% of the problems businesspeople encounter with their personal computers involve storage limitations, points out Dom Camardella, a Santa Barbara, Calif., microcomputer consultant with Data Bank. This is particularly true if your business is growing, adds Jay Honeycutt, president of Computer Group Inc., a consulting and education firm in Boston. "The numbers and warm bodies you're keeping track of are going to expand," he adds. "So you have to have enough disk capacity to grow as your requirements grow."

Until recently, micro owners generally would replace 5 1/4-inch floppy disks with 8-inch floppies before buying a Winchester. But with prices falling for hard disk drives, this intermediate step is becoming less common. And hard-disk devices, which consist of a number of platters -- much like phonograph records -- are much more reliable than floppies, since the disks are sealed in a box to prevent impurities. The individual platters measure either 5 1/4 inches or 8 inches, and the drives will store from 5 to 40 MB or more. With some brands, you can "daisychain," or link together, several such devices for even greater capacity.

Dozens of manufacturers are currently selling the drives, which cost roughly $1,500 to $8,000. (As a portent of lower prices, Non-Linear Systems Inc. in Solana Beach, Calif., is offering its portable Kaypro 10 computer, which comes with a 10-MB hard disk, for $2,795.) Some brands will work with many kinds of micros; others are designed for a specific machine. Usually included in the price are a disk-controller card that links the computer to the disk and software modification for the micro's operating system, so it will "recognize" the different drive.

If you are shopping for disk drives, you should look for an entire package and see it operating with your machine before buying. Purchasing a hard disk from the same company that made your micro is also a good idea. It may be more expensive, says Computer Group's Honeycutt, but you get guaranteed compatibility and support. "They can't very well say it won't work, when they're selling both ends of the system," he says.

Besides greater capacity, the hard disk has other advantages. It allows users to sort through data much faster. At home, Stephan works on another PC equipped with two floppy drives. "It appears to take three times as long to do anything," he says. And, he points out, the Winchester is more convenient. "People have a hard time juggling floppy disks around," he says, "They tend to get the wrong one, in the wrong place, at the wrong time."

While solving some problems, though, upgrading a micro with a hard disk creates another -- backing up large files. For instance, it would take Stephan two hours and 30 floppies to duplicate the data on an entire 10-MB disk. To counter this difficulty, some users buy either another hard disk or cartridge tape streamers. These cartridges are like large audio cassettes, and the entire assembly costs about the same as a Winchester. With most streamers, says Alan Groh, director of operations at Sauer Computer Systems Inc., a St. Louis -- based consulting firm, you can copy 16 MB in three to five minutes. (Recently, removable cartridge hard disks, which cost from around $1,800 to as much as $6,000 and hold from 5 to 25 MB, have come on the market. The cartridges can be inserted into drives, just like floppies, and make convenient backup devices for traditional Winchesters. And, says Honeycutt, "the price is going to drop like a stone.")

Six months after he bought his second hard disk, Stephan ordered a $1,795 Davong tape back-up; it proved its worth even before it arrived. While it was on order, an employee accidentally hit a wrong key and wiped out four weeks' worth of nonduplicated data. Preparing for disaster, yet having it happen anyway, "rubbed salt in the wound," says Stephan.

Finding that the software you are using on floppies won't work with a hard disk is another possible hassle when changing from one kind of disk drive to another. You should check out software compatibility at the outset, suggests Honeycutt.

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