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They are malleable, flexible and immune to data crashes. However, the technology is still in the nascent form. It is highly expensive.

 

The new technology combines existent structure and functions of existent data storage devices with compression rules. It makes use of optical photographic imagery technology restricting entry to only users of the stored data. Thus, the technology is being developed with a view to preventing data invasion.

 

The Data Protection Act: Modified in October 2001, the Data Protection Act calls for greater control of data privacy on digital devices of mass storage. The Act also argues for a more stringent means of data control by every company in compliance with national security. Consequently, the Act has propelled the rise and growth of various digital mass storage devices. Termed as the storage devices of the future, they are developed on the principles of compression.

 

The Compression Rules: The most commonly used standard is Motion JPEG with a compression rate of 15:1 compression. Consequently, recent compression rates of M-JPEG reduced a 450Kb file to 30Kb. However, modern compression standards have changed. Recent compression standards devised by Motion Picture Expert Group are used for futuristic development of digitisation of moving images. This standard is called MPEG. It uses the redundancy between adjacent frames.

 

MPEG-1 has three types of encoded frames. Intracoded frames usually contain all of the video information needed to make a complete picture. Previous I-frames or P-frames create predicted frames. They are used to generate future P-frames. Bi-directional predicted frames use both previous and future frames. A complete sequence of frames is comprised of a series of these different frame types having more than one I-frame for every 10 P- or B-frames. This process is known as inter-frame correlation with a compression rate of 100:1.

 

MPEG-2 is the format developed to be used in the futuristic 'digital video disk technology'. This technology can store 90 minutes of VHS quality video and audio on 650Mb of storage space, such as a CD-ROM. However, there are a number of disadvantages to MPEG compression.

 

Digital Compression Standards: In 2001, the Data Protection Act issued a code of practice. The code provided for 62 types of digital compression standards to be used and developed by IT companies. These compression standards were to be affordable and immune to data crashes. This meant the creation and development of futurist digital devices, which never lost data. The Act thus provided for the functioning of a strong economy.

 

Types of Devices

 

Digital Video Recording: The traditional data storage device is being diversified and further developed to store all kinds of moving images, sound bytes and data files. The digital technology makes use of lossy compression technology allowing for immense storage capacity. The technology allows the disk to screen the data before storage. The technology also makes use of optical blue laser functions. The video signal can be represented in a digital format of YUV. The YUV format is made up of the Y i.e. the luminance code and the UV stands for the colour difference signals. The digital YUV format allows fewer bytes to digitise the video. Usage of the YUV format forces the luminance to be digitised as one byte and the colour difference signal as one byte. This aids compression as only two bytes are being used to store lengthy files.

 

Digital Audio Tape (DAT)

 

DAT drives are described as miniature audio cassettes. These devices use magnetic tape having a compressed storage capacity of more than 50GB. The DAT is being developed to be immune to data crashes. It lends itself to archiving, storing diverse data on different partitions. The disk uses magnetic optical technology, which has the ability to permanently destroy all data. Thus, the technology allows for data privacy.

 

Digital Versatile Disc (DVD)

 

The digital versatile disk utilises laser compression technology. This technology makes use of optical memory reading indentations to store audio-visual data. The technology uses both sides of the disk as a traditional disk and is being developed to replace the hard drive. The technology allows the disk to be portable and flexible. It affords a low rewind or retrieval time. The technology makes the disk immune to common causes of data loss. The disk makes use of traditional non-moving parts of the hard drive and the new optic blue laser compression technology.

 

The technology also uses the UDF, which is used to compress and save long continuous files. The disk includes MPEG1 compression software allowing recordings to be made directly from a composite to a PC with MPEG1 decoding.