Data Transfer Rate vs Data Type Science Fair Projects

Project Title

Does the Type of Information in a File (on a CD) Affect the Data Transfer Rate?

Purpose

Does the type of information in a file (on a CD) affect the data transfer rate? If I test text, graphic, and music file transfer rate, then the text will transfer the fastest, followed by music, then graphics.

Procedure

Create three, 400 MB CD-RW's, one of which is text, one of which is music and one of which is graphics. Transfer the files from the CD to the hard drive of the computer. Start timing when the transfer box appears and stop timing when the box closes. Run 10 trials for each CD. Between every trial remove the previously transferred file, run disk cleanup and disk defragmentation.

Conclusion

The mean time to transfer for the test file was 5:43.22; the mean time for the music file to transfer was 5:56.77; the mean time for the graphics file to transfer was 5:43.26. The text file had a file extension of DOC; the music file had the file extension MP3; and the graphic file had the file extension JPEG. Based on the mean values of the time that it took for each file type to transfer, my hypothesis was not supported.