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by Zsolt Kerekes,
editor - February 4, 2008 |
If you substitute "hard drive" for "rat"
in the headline above - you'll understand why the hard disk industry is having
such a good time at the moment and why
Western Digital's
recently announced 46% hard drive revenue growth didn't prevent
Seagate too having a
double digit growth quarter.
When I started
STORAGEsearch.com back in 1998 -
the computer industry accounted for nearly every hard disk in use but it was
clear that would change and in an article
6 years ago I
said why (according to my simple analysis) I thought the entertainment market
would eventually lead to the coming of the terabyte storage box in the home.
That's becoming a commonplace reality today. (Some analysts such as Tom
Coughlin, President of
Coughlin Associates
and events such as Storage Visions
have been tracking that paradigm shift with more detailed predictions and
reports if you need them.)
With hard disks now appearing in DVRs,
cameras, music players, cars and even mobile phones - the mass storage market
is no longer the zero sum game it once was. If manufacturer X sells more disks
into the notebook PC market, it doesn't stop manufacturer Y selling more (very
similar) disks into a new emerging market for entertainment gadgets.
Although
we haven't yet reached the stage where you are no more than 20 feet away from
a hard disk drive - we are getting very close. Not there yet in my home -
because some of the entertainment delivery boxes run off wireless networks.
As to rats? - my own experience is that the 20 feet rule is often
true.
I've got 2 "active" 4 year old cats who love eating
rats - but prefer dining at home. As they have demolished all the stupid rats
close to the house I often see them coming from as far as 2 fields away - with a
little wriggling rodent. Then I hear the snap of the cat flap - followed by a
familiar scurrying sound.
Rats are smart and often pretend to be dead
- at which stage the cats lose interest - and I have to get involved. Or if the
rat escapes me - I'll just shut the cats in the room for a few hours until they
get hungry and rediscover it.
What's more disturbing is when (as in the
movie Aliens)
the scurrying sound comes from the ceiling above you.
In the coldest
nights of winter the boldest of the local rats (which haven't yet had their
heads chewed off) crawl up the outside walls and discover the joys of a living
in the roof space. When you hear the scratching sounds above the ceiling at 4am
- you may wish optimistically that it's a squirrel or bird which has got lost -
but you know deep down that it's rats. That's when the bad dreams begin. From
the practical point of view - they sometimes go away - and you don't hear from
them again. But if I hear them 2 nights running then I set a few packs of rat
poison - and the problem is solved for another year.
Last week I spent
a couple of days in the roof space as I was improving the insulation. The
typical rat runs of past residents were evident in many places. |
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As to the Byte family
rodents... Megabyte
says he's not a rat but a mouse. I don't want to upset him (and he doesn't read
my columns so he may not find out) but that tail design was modeled on a big
fat rat which used to hang around the chickens back in the summer he was
born. | |
| see also:-
How Solid is
Hard Disk's Future?,
Animal brands in
the SSD market | |
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