Questions in the exam will provide students with a scenario or situation and ask them to identify suitable hardware and provide reasons as to its suitability.

There are not usually any trick questions, it should be a fairly straightforward matter to select the correct hardware. What is important is that students recognise which hardware devices are NOT suitable.

A common example will be about backing up a large amount of data, often many GB. It is important for students to recognise that floppy disks, zip drives, flash memory sticks and CDs will not be large enough for this type of back up. The correct answer should be a second hard disk (which should be removable) and magnetic tape.

When answering these questions, students should always consider and where possible discuss the following things:

• portability
• specialist hardware required
• cost
• speed
• ease of use
• compatibility

Portability
How easy is the backup to carry around – if the backup is done on tape it is easy to carry, but if it is a hard disk drive it becomes more difficult. You also need to be aware of what is happening to the backup media – magnetic fields can corrupt data on magnetic media.

Specialist hardware required
Tape devices require a suitable tape drive, zip and jazz disks require appropriate hardware as does a second hard disk drive. CD, DVD and floppy disk are almost universal - although some computers are now being built without floppy disk drives.

Cost
The cost of both the hardware and the media need to be considered.

• A CD writer costs £80 and the CD under £1.
• DVD-RW disks are £2 each
• 128MB flash memory stick is £50
• A 120GB removable hard disk drive costs £100
• A 50GB tape costs £60, just over £1 per GB. the drive to read and write the tape costs £500.

Speed
The speed of backup needs to be considered – floppy disks are slow and need changing if there is a lot to backup. Tape is serial and can take time to get to the required record, Direct access media such as CDs and DVDs are faster at retrieving data.

Ease of Use
How easy is the device to use – a second hard disk drive can be difficult, especially if it is a removable one as it needs to be replaced each time it is used. A CD/DVD are easier to understand (remember – easier must be justified and used in comparison with something else).

Compatibility
This is linked to portability – not all machines can read all media. It is no good having a piece of hardware in one machine that writes backups tapes but the tape cannot be read anywhere else – what happens when there is a robbery or a breakdown and the tape drive cannot be replaced.