Storing computer data has been an issue since the very first computers. At that time the problem was solved by having paper punch cards. For storing or moving your work you have the following options.

Floppy Disks

Avoid using these! Certainly never trust them to hold the only copy of your work or to transport your work when you really need it (e.g. to transport your presentation to an important event). You must also never work directly from a floppy disk. If you really must use one then copy the file you wish to work on to your computer's hard disk, work on it there and then copy it back to the floppy disk when you have finished. A floppy disk will store 1.44MB of work, which used to seem a lot but now isn't even enough to hold one decent photograph.

USB Memory sticks/keys

These are available in a range of storage capacities up to the current limit of 2GB (Feb '06). Prices are falling all the time but will tend to climb quickly as the storage capacity moves towards the top end.

It is possible to get secure versions of USB memory sticks but it is unlikely these can be used by students on WBS machines as they require the user to install software on the local machine.

Memory sticks do fail and should never hold the only copy of your work.

CD-R and CDRW

CD-R

A CD-R writer (or burner) looks like a regular CD player but it can also create CDs, provided you buy the special CD-R disks. All student computers and most staff computers at WBS have CD Writers installed.  A CD-R can be written to once (i.e. once a file is on the disk you cannot delete it and re-use the space). A CD can hold around 600MB of work. If you only use 100MB this time then you can continue to add files until the CD is full. During this time however the CD will only be readable in your computer. If you are going to give the CD to anyone else then you must 'Finish' the CD. This is done in the CD burning software. Once a CD is 'finished' it will be readable by the vast majority of computers in the world but you will not be able to add any more files to the CD.

CD-RW

A CD read/writer (CD-RW) is similar to a CD-R (and the same machine can do usually do both) but, provided you buy a special CD-RW disk, you can write to the disk many times. In this way it is like a very large floppy disk, when you no longer need the files on the disk you can delete them and re-use the space. CD-RWs are a great way of temporarily storing data but the information held on them is not as secure as on a CD-R. You can store you work on them but when you try to access your work in a few months time you might find that you cannot. A CD-RW must be prepared before it can be used in the same way as a large floppy disk. Instructions on doing that are available below

• How to use Roxio Easy CD to create CDs
• Preparing a CDRW using Roxio Easy CD
• Technical explanation of how CD-Rs and CD-RWs work for interested readers (from howstuffworks.com)