4 ms·

You need it to do multiple copies, double sided copies, collated etc. All the major maker's built-in software does overwrites of the data to various levels of s

You need it to do multiple copies, double sided copies, collated etc. All the major maker's built-in software does overwrites of the data to various levels of security. Otherwise the government wouldn't buy them. They also have fairly small drives - the companies are out to make money - so at somewhere like kinkos your job would be overwritten multiple times by the end of the day. It's only an issue if the system fails and the drive needs to be replaced - but anywhere operating under any sort of security regs would destroy the drive before it went off site. We used to destroy them along with any waste explosive/munitions. Then health and safety stopped us and we had to buy a super monster shredder - which is a lot scarier than explosives but it can shred drives/entire files/interns etc.

randrews 16y ago
Why would you need nonvolatile storage for that? Why not just store it in RAM temporarily?
- tedunangst 16y ago
  A hard drive could be cheaper than the amount of RAM required to store 20 pages of uncompressed scans.
  - randrews 16y ago
    If it's only 20 pages, I'd actually guess not. HDD + controller, for a minimum of (say) a 20 gig drive (I couldn't find any smaller ones), I'd guess would be a lot more than the extra hundred megs (tops) in the RAM that it already needs to have anyway. So it only makes sense to have a drive if you want to store a LOT more images than 20. Maybe it needs a drive anyway for some other reason (like the software that runs it lives there instead of on a CF card or something), so it ends up being cheaper and easier that way?
    - Daniel_Newby 16y ago
      100 megs? A single letter-size sheet is 30 megs at 600 ppi.
      - randrews 16y ago
        Okay, so 600 megs. An extra gig of RAM has to be cheaper than a hard drive + controller you wouldn't otherwise need, right?
        Daniel_Newby 16y ago
        Many people occasionally copy/print multi-hundred page documents. That runs to many gigs of RAM, $30 just for the DRAM chips. And then you need to design what amounts to a custom PC motherboard to talk to them. The price could easily run to $75, not counting the enormous engineering costs. Or you buy a $40 ATA drive and connect it to your embedded processor's built-in interface.
billybob 16y ago
Those are good points and legitimate use cases. But if they have small hard drives, how did the guy in the story recover "tens of thousands of documents" from 3 copiers? Why would a copier need to be able to store that many pages? I mean, OK, hard drives are cheap, so maybe copier manufacturers just said "eh, even if they run huge jobs, they can come back and repeat them later. Only costs us a couple more bucks." But dang - they gotta address this. EDIT: Hmmmm. I guess I just forgot how freaking big hard drives ARE these days. Discussion below about how a "small" 20GB drive could store so many documents at such-and-such size... oh yeah. It's startling to remember how gigantic 20GB sounded 10 years ago.

randrews 16y ago

Why would you need nonvolatile storage for that? Why not just store it in RAM temporarily?

tedunangst 16y ago
A hard drive could be cheaper than the amount of RAM required to store 20 pages of uncompressed scans.
- randrews 16y ago
  If it's only 20 pages, I'd actually guess not. HDD + controller, for a minimum of (say) a 20 gig drive (I couldn't find any smaller ones), I'd guess would be a lot more than the extra hundred megs (tops) in the RAM that it already needs to have anyway. So it only makes sense to have a drive if you want to store a LOT more images than 20. Maybe it needs a drive anyway for some other reason (like the software that runs it lives there instead of on a CF card or something), so it ends up being cheaper and easier that way?
  - Daniel_Newby 16y ago
    100 megs? A single letter-size sheet is 30 megs at 600 ppi.
    - randrews 16y ago
      Okay, so 600 megs. An extra gig of RAM has to be cheaper than a hard drive + controller you wouldn't otherwise need, right?
      - Daniel_Newby 16y ago
        Many people occasionally copy/print multi-hundred page documents. That runs to many gigs of RAM, $30 just for the DRAM chips. And then you need to design what amounts to a custom PC motherboard to talk to them. The price could easily run to $75, not counting the enormous engineering costs. Or you buy a $40 ATA drive and connect it to your embedded processor's built-in interface.

billybob 16y ago

Those are good points and legitimate use cases. But if they have small hard drives, how did the guy in the story recover "tens of thousands of documents" from 3 copiers? Why would a copier need to be able to store that many pages? I mean, OK, hard drives are cheap, so maybe copier manufacturers just said "eh, even if they run huge jobs, they can come back and repeat them later. Only costs us a couple more bucks." But dang - they gotta address this. EDIT: Hmmmm. I guess I just forgot how freaking big hard drives ARE these days. Discussion below about how a "small" 20GB drive could store so many documents at such-and-such size... oh yeah. It's startling to remember how gigantic 20GB sounded 10 years ago.