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After SSDs... What Next?
Will Hard Disks Get Faster?
Why I Tire of - "Tier Zero Storage"
3 Easy Ways to Enter the SSD Market
2009 - Year of SSD Market Confusion
Overview of the Notebook SSD Market
SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance"
War of the Disks: Hard Disk Drives vs. Flash SSDs
Sanitization Methods for Cleaning Up Hard Disk Drives
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high reliability flash SSDs  for embedded and high reliability servers
hdd / hard disk drive news
Storage Visions Calls for Sponsors

Editor:- June 24, 2009 - the 9th annual Storage Visions Conference is now open for presentations, sponsors and exhibitors.

It will be held at the Riviera Hotel Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, January 5 & 6, 2010.

DataSlide Says Revolutionary HD is Closer
Editor:- June 15, 2009 - Dataslide announced it was close to productizing its revolutionary hard drive technology.

DataSlide says it leverages LCD and HDD processes to create an ultra thin massive 2D head array which enables symmetric read and write performance of 160,000 random IOPS with transfer rate of 500MB/s.

"DataSlide's Massively Parallel architecture with 64 heads per surface could saturate a 32 lane PCIe bus," said Charles Barnes, CEO of DataSlide. "The Hard Rectangular Drive has the industry reliability and cost advantages of Hard Disk Drives with superior performance and lower power then Solid State Drives. The HRD is over 60% lower power then HDD and during idle the media has zero power dissipation making it the GREEN storage winner."

Editor's comments:- This journey started 7 years ago - and there are still many marketing hurdles to cross before you can expect to click and add such drives into your shopping basket.

Dataslide made its début in the pages of StorageSearch.com in 2002 - when it announced it had filed patents for a revolutionary design of hard drive.

In 2004 - Dataslide announced it had demonstrated a prototype (under NDA) with the equivalent of 72,000 virtual RPM and the potential to reach the mechanical equivalent of 12 million RPM.

Is there a place today for such a new technology in the enterprise storage space?

Most hard disk makers have now accepted that SSDs will provide the performance part of heavy transactional loads - while HDDs provide economies of scale for massive content.

Meanwhile - within the SSD space - there are many new technology pretenders promising to claim flash's throne at some time in the future.

Until more is revealed publicly about capacity and price - the competitiveness of Dataslide's technology can't be judged. And even if that looks promising reliability remains a key question for any new storage technology.


New Notebook SSD Market Overview - is not pretty

Editor:- June 15, 2009 - StorageSearch.com published a new article today called - Overview of the Notebook SSD Market.

There's a simple way to summarize the complex view of the SSD Notebook / Netbook market.

Lots of initial hype and optimism that the market would deliver an astonishingly new product experience to users, followed by dismay and disillusion due to a flurry of poorly conceived, badly designed and ineptly executed products. ...read the article


Addonics Enters Disk Duplicator Market

Editor:- June 10, 2009 - Addonics today announced a family of hard disk duplicators for 2.5" and 3.5 SATA or PATA drives..

Prices start from $249.

Editor's comments:- Addonics's Zebra disk duplicator is the 2nd Zebra in my menagerie directory - Animal Brands in the Storage Market.

The disk duplicator market is not, frankly a great market to be in, at a time when hard disk market revenue is declining by double digit percentages year on year. Addonics says you can use these duplicators for SSDs too. But that won't boost demand because most oems are just going to redeploy the under utilized equipment they've already got - rather than buy new stuff.


FalconStor Claims Fastest Disk Backup

Editor:- June 1, 2009 - FalconStor Software today claimed that it now delivers the fastest backup and deduplication time in the industry.

Using a 100TB test bed connected to a single cluster of 2 FalconStor VTL nodes the total time to backup and deduplicate data was under 14 hours, yielding an average of 2GB/s per second.

Physical tape production can be achieved directly through 4Gbps Fibre Channel links by exporting tapes from FalconStor VTL to the physical tape library without using a separate media server. All hardware components used for the performance test are commonly available standard parts, including standard Linux-based servers and low-cost SATA-based storage subsystems.

Editor's comments:- Record Breaking claims are often hostage to editor research. We've certainly run stories about faster backup and restores before (10TB/hour in 2003 for example) but that didn't include dedupe. Let's see if this one passes the test of reader scrutiny.


WD Sells Disk Substrate Plant to Hitachi GST

Editor:- May 20, 2009 - WD announced it has agreed to sell the assets of its media substrate manufacturing facility in Sarawak, Malaysia, to a subsidiary of Hitachi GST.

The employees of WD at the facility will become employees of the purchaser. Acquired storage companies, Hard disk drives


WD Ships 2TB Surveillance Drive

Editor:- May 19, 2009 - WD announced availability of a 2TB model in its AV-GP line of hard drives designed for the surveillance market.

Designed to last in always-on streaming digital audio/video environments the new SATA compatible drive (MSRP $299) supports playback of up to 12 simultaneous HD streams.

Editor's comments:- SoleraTec has a whitepaper on its site called - the Video Surveillance Marketplace (pdf) which provides a good introduction to this market.


Toshiba Takes the High Ground in Notebook SSD Wars

Editor:- May 14, 2009 - Toshiba announced today it is offering 512GB SSDs as an option in notebooks for the Japanese market.

The new, Toshiba-developed 512GB SSD employs a 2-bit-per-cell MLC flash memory - which gives 4x the capacity of SLC flash used in industrial and enterprise SSDs for the same silicon wafer footprint.

One of the failures of the SSD market in 2008 was the low performance of SSDs integrated in notebooks. Toshiba's new notebook seems to address that market failure . The company says its new SSD controller boosts data throughput figures of 230MB/s reads and 180MB/s writes.


Data Analyzers Invests in New Data Recovery Facility

Orlando, FL - May 12, 2009 - Data Analyzers is moving into a newly acquired class 100 clean room.

The clean room environment at Data Analyzers is used to disassemble malfunctioning hard drives for data recovery purposes.

"Despite the economically difficult times, we have invested in a more efficient clean room environment and are reforming our business development strategies" said Andrew von Ramin Mapp, founder of the company.


New Guide for SSD Wannabies

Editor:- May 1, 2009 - StorageSearch.com published a new article this week called - "3 Easy Ways to Enter the SSD Market."

Nowadays it seems like everyone wants to get into the SSD market. This tells you how to do it. And gives real examples.

So if you're a hard disk maker, or RAID controller company or flash memory maker who still doesn't have an SSD product line here's my advice. Stop giving the press interviews about how you're still - "looking" at the SSD market from the sidelines and evaluating what you might do next year maybe..."

Some of these storage manufacturers (and you know who I mean) - have been singing the same old song for years. And it just sounds pathetic. They should shape up, shut up, and get in the game.

I've had early feedback from senior VPs in several SSD companies already - who think it's a very interesting article.


Seagate Anticipates Another Flat Quarter for Hard Disks

Editor:- April 21, 2009 - Seagate reported results for the quarter ended April 3, 2009.

Revenue was exactly in line with the guidance issued last week. So no surprises there.

But what does make today's announcement interesting is Seagate's views about short term prospects for the hard disk market. Among other things, it says...

"For the June quarter, in light of the company's view of the current market environment, the company is planning for the overall demand for disk drives to be relatively flat as compared to the March quarter."


WD Ships New 2TB Enterprise Hard Drive

Editor:- April 20, 2009 - Western Digital - announced details of a new 2TB 3.5" SATA hard drive - the WD RE4-GP.

Features include time-limited error recovery for use in RAID systems, and lower power consumption than older hard drives. MSRP is $329.

Editor's comments:- this kind of drive is optimized to provide high capacity at low cost, rather than high performance. Typical applications include disk to disk backup and video or other massive content storage.


Seagate Not So Pessimistic as Before

Editor:- April 14, 2009 - Seagate updated its revenue forecast (for the quarter ending July 3, 2009) in guidance published yesterday.

Seagate expects to report revenue of approximately $2.1 billion. Although that's 27% lower than the year ago period - it's 31% better than the low end forecast which the company had issued before.

Neither of the words "WD" or "SSD" appeared anywhere in the text of this press release as pertinent market factors.

This text did appear - "The company's leadership position in the enterprise market remained substantially unchanged from the prior quarter; however, the TAM for enterprise class products decreased by an estimated 20%, sequentially..."


Seagate's SSD Apologia?

Editor:- April 8, 2009 - Seagate has effectively published an apology for not being in the enterprise SSD market - in an article published yesterday on TechCrunchIT called - Solid-State Drives in the Enterprise: Raising Standards.

It's a nicely written article by Alvin Cox, a senior staff engineer at Seagate. The plausible sounding line he argues is that Seagate has been taking a cautious stance re SSDs, waiting for standards, not being fooled by hype about performance claims etc.

In an article published over a year ago I analyzed Why Seagate will Fail the SSD Challenge. Seagate's problems are marketing, business and management related - not technical. I'm sure they employ many world-class engineers. But they will still fail. You can see the analysis and what-ifs in my article.

SSDs have been used in the enterprise for decades. As the price curves for memory have dropped - many new opportunities have been incrementally created within the SSD market. Over 110 companies now make and market SSDs. That will more than double in the next year helped by the easy availability of SSD SoCs. Seagate will eventually be among them. Seagate's commentaries on SSDs sound remarkably similar to Sun Microsystems' public agonies with Linux and the x86 server OS market. First denial, then more denial, then explanations of why customers wouldn't buy such products and then too little cautious action too late - when no one really cared any more. And you can see where they are now.


WD Enters the SSD Market

Editor:- March 30, 2009 - Western Digital has entered the SSD market by acquiring SiliconSystems for $65 million in a cash transaction.

Integration into WD begins immediately, with SiliconSystems now becoming known as the WD Solid-State Storage business unit, complementing WD's existing Branded Products, Client Storage, Consumer Storage and Enterprise Storage business units.

"WD's strong balance sheet, sales reach, and operations and logistics capabilities will allow us to greatly accelerate our penetration of our existing markets, while combining our engineering expertise with WD will enable us to develop new solid-state drives to broaden our overall product portfolio and address the emerging applications for solid-state storage in WD's existing customer base," said Michael Hajeck, a founder and CEO of SiliconSystems, now senior vp and general manager of WD's Solid-State Storage business unit. "We are extremely excited to be joining WD and enabling an even stronger future for our talented team." WD's SSD acquisition FAQs


After SSDs? - Predicting the Storage Market's Next Obsession

Editor:- March 12, 2009 - StorageSearch.com has published a new article - After SSDs... What Next?

It looks beyond the next 3 years of hoopla in the SSD market and predicts what will be the next "big thing" in storage after that. ...read the article, SSD market research & analysts


Seagate Demos 6Gbps SATA Prototype Hard Drive

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. - March 9, 2009 - Seagate and AMD will collaborate in the first public demonstration of 6Gbps SATA storage this week at a conference in New Orleans.

The demo features 2 Seagate SATA disk drives - one a shipping Barracuda 7200.12 3Gb/second hard drive and the other a prototype Barracuda 6Gbps drive - in a desktop PC to show the performance difference between the 2 generations. The PC is powered by an AMD prototype SATA 6Gb/second chipset. The Seagate SATA 3Gb/second drive runs at more than 2.5Gbps and the SATA 6Gb/second drive at 5.5Gbps with the performance of each storage interface displayed on the PC monitor. ...Seagate profile, storage chips


Olixir Announces DataVault Support for FIPS 140-2

Washington, D.C. - March 9, 2009 - Olixir Technologies announced it will add new security features to its family of DataVault hard drives in Q2 2009.

This will make them fully-compliant with the requirements outlined in the Federal Information Processing Standards FIPS 140-2.

Incorporating an advanced set of security features including anti-virus, anti-malware and encryption agents, which have already been approved by the DOD DARTT Team, Olixir's external drives will meet all criteria to be connected via USB cables to U.S. Department of Defense networked computers. This comprehensive security capability will be resident on the Mobile DataVault products and run independently of the host computer to proactively protect the drive and the network from malware and virus infections. ...Olixir Technologies profile, Storage Security


Hitachi GST Buys Desktop Storage Company

SAN JOSE, Calif. - February 23, 2009 - Hitachi GST today announced that it has agreed to acquire Fabrik, Inc. whose leading storage brands include G-Technology and SimpleTech.

Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Closing of the acquisition, which is subject to customary conditions, is expected to occur early in the 2nd quarter of 2009. Fabrik's business will continue intact and form the core of Hitachi GST's newly-formed external storage business.

Hitachi GST will fully support the G-Technology and SimpleTech product lines, building upon their success and differentiation in the market. The combined company will also leverage operational, technical and product development resources, distribution channels and global reach to accelerate delivery of a full portfolio of traditional hard drives, solid state drives and branded personal and professional storage products. ...Hitachi GST profile ...G-Technology profile
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earlier storage news

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SSDs Pass HDDs in Storage Density

2009 may well be remembered as the year that flash SSDs surpassed HDDs in storage capacity in the same form factor.

I'm not talking about itsy bitsy 1 inch and smaller drives here. I'm talking about the hard core 2.5" form factor.

That's the size which once seemed to offer the best hopes for hard disk makers staying in business - in applications like disk to disk backup, entertainment bulk storage etc.

In January 2009 - pureSilicon started sampling a 2.5" MLC SSD - with 1TB capacity in a 9.5mm high form factor.

A few weeks later Western Digital temporarily restored the parity in storage density when it announced a 2TB 3.5" hard drive. Since you can put 2x 2.5" drives into a single 3.5" enclosure - you can think of them as being equivalent. That is until either the next amplification in MLC (if it ever works) or the next shrink in flash memory (maybe later than sooner).

Price of the 2.5" terabyte SSD wasn't mentioned. I expect it will cost a lot. But nowhere near as much as the 1st terabyte SSDs cost - when they appeared in 2002 - at a cool $2 million.

So you may well ask - when will SSDs cost less than HDDs for the same capacity?

In some high-performance grades (15K RPM server drives) - I expect to see that happen this year - in smaller capacities like 100GB. Looking Ahead to the 2009 SSD Market
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Adtron industrial grade  flash solid state disk
2.5" 128GB industrial PATA SLC flash SSDs
from Adtron
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Nibble - Re: Hard Disk Drives......
IBM invented disk storage and shipped the first HDD in 1956.

With a 24" diameter it stored 5M bytes.

Until the late 1990s hard drives were commonly called "Winchester" drives - named after the city where the original hard disk designers were based.

Hard disks use magnetic recording media on one or more spinning disks (also called platters). That's where the magnet allusion in our HDD Megabyte image comes from.

A read write head moves in a straight line along one half of the platter similar in concept to (pre CD era) linear audio (vinyl) record players.

The seek / access time of the disk is determined by the rotation speed. That can take as long as 1 complete revolution of the disk.

The hard disk capacity depends on how many platters there are, whether data is on both sides, how big they are (diameter) and the current state of the art regarding megabytes stored per inch.

The throughput of the disk depends on the spin speed, recording density and where the head is on the surface of the disk. On the outer edge the data throughput is higher than on the inner edge. Drives with multiple heads and platters can deliver more throughput - but the added mechanical complexity and heat reduces reliability.

Over 90% of the disk drive manufacturers which existed in the 1990's have gone bust, or merged , or have been acquired by other disk companies.

The number of HDD oems shrank to a low point at the turn of the millenium, and overall HDD market revenue was on a downward slide for many years. That's because the cost of an average hard drive was reducing at a faster rate than the growth of drive shipments. Improved technology and competition was shrinking the value of the industry.

But since about 2004 new high growth markets have emerged for HDDs (both inside and outside the traditional PC and server markets) which reversed the revenue slide.

The prospects of multi-billion dollar segments with double digit revenue growth within the hard disk market has attracted new entrants and new competition from products like solid state disks and hybrid drives.

In 2008 the worldwide hard disk market revenue grew to over $35 billion.

In 2008 the highest capacity shipping drives were:-
  • 3.5" - 1.5TB - from Seagate
  • 2.5" - 500GB - from various oems
  • 1.8" - 250GB - from Toshiba
.
click for more info - the fastest - 2.5" SATA flash SSD
Platinum M-Cell SSD
the fastest - 2.5" SATA flash SSD
from DTS
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The Perils of Early Hard Drives

Editor:- there were a great many stories published in 2006 related to the 50th anniversary of the hard disk drive.

But here's one with a different spin - about the dangers posed by early mass storage devices. It came from my brother in law Peter Downes.

"In 1964 I was a programmer / operator at Pilkington Glass in St Helens. At that time Pilkington had one of the largest commercial computer installations in the UK. It included ICT computers, countless card punches and readers, Ampex tape drives, and, I think, CDC disk drives.

"One night in the main computer room I witnessed the internal cylinder of a hard drive break out of its cabinet. It was several feet in diameter and spinning at high speed.

It bounced when it hit the floor, then as if deciding which way to go, it hovered and raced through the glass partition, and sped along until it hit the solid wall of the building at which point it exploded. The computer room was sprayed with glass, but luckily it was safety glass and I wasn't hurt.

I couldn't help thinking that if it had come for me it would have killed me. One thing I'm not sure about is why it bounced when it first hit the floor and only exploded when it hit the concrete wall. There was a lot of energy in the cylinder - and it had a horizontal spindle."

Storage History
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a Short History of Disk to Disk Backup
STORAGEsearch.com has been reporting on the enterprise D2d market since the concept first began.
This article plots the main events in the market transition from the heady days when tape backup was at its height - through to the situation now where most corporate data is backed up using disk to disk backup. click to read the article - a Short History of  Disk to Disk Backup
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Sanitization Methods for Cleaning Up Hard Disk Drives

Removing the data on old unwanted disk drives has become a concern for all users.

Pointsec found that they were able to read 7 out of 10 hard-drives bought over the Internet at auctions such as eBay, for less than the cost of a McDonald's meal, all of which had "supposedly" been "wiped-clean" or "re-formatted".

This article by Intelligent Computer Solutions reviews the various methods available to sanitize hard disks along with the advantages and disadvantages in each case....read the article, disk sanitizers
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Flash Memory vs. Hard Disk Drives - Which Will Win?

There's a confusing picture in many consumer products like phones, cameras and music players in which one day it seems that the storage function is done by flash and next day another company announces they're doing the same thing with miniature hard disks.

Is there any sense to this seemingly random choice?

This article by Semico Research uses pricing trends, technology trends and unique market analysis insights to show that users and oems may be able to reliably predict which storage devices will be most cost effective depending where you are on the future history curve. ...read the article, Hard disk drives, Flash Memory, Market research, Solid state disks
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Are MLC SSDs Ever Safe in Enterprise Apps?
This is a follow up article to the popular SSD Myths and Legends which, a year earlier demolished the myth that flash memory wear-out (a comfort blanket beloved by many RAM SSD makers) precluded the use of flash in heavy duty datacenters.

This new article looks at the risks posed by MLC Nand Flash SSDs which have recently hatched from their breeeding ground as chip modules in cellphones and morphed into hard disk form factors.
which technology to choose? - read the article It starts down a familiar lane but an unexpected technology twist (which arrived in my email while writing this article) takes you to a startling new world of possibilities. ...read the article
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Hitachi Celebrates 50 Years of Hard Disks

SAN JOSE, Calif. - April 4, 2006 - Hitachi today published some historic reminiscences and market data to celebrate 50 years of the hard disk drive market.

Hitachi holds the privilege of preserving the legacy and upholding the innovation heritage of the hard drive, having acquired the IBM hard drive business in 2003. IBM invented the hard drive in San Jose, California and brought it to market in 1956 as the RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control).
  • Over the past 50 years, areal density - the measurement of how many data bits can be stored on an inch of disk space - has increased 50 million times.
  • RAMAC, the first hard drive - delivered on September 13, 1956 - stored 5 megabytes of data. Today, the highest-capacity hard drive holds 500 gigabytes.
  • In 1956, the RAMAC cost $50,000 or $10,000 per megabyte. Today, a gigabyte of storage on a 3.5-inch hard drive can cost less than 50 cents.
  • Today, 92% of all new data created reside on magnetic media, primarily hard drives.
The demand for hard drives is expected to increase multiple-fold. In a recent paper, the University of California at Berkeley projected the worldwide data stored on magnetic media to be 99.5 exabytes in 2005, as compared to 7 exabytes in 2000. (An Exabyte = 1,024 x 1,024 x 1,024 x Gigabytes = just over 1 billion Gigabytes. - from Megabyte's Storage Dictionary)

Today Hitachi also announced two new 3.5" hard drives. The Deskstar T7K500 and Deskstar 7K160 feature 7,200 RPM spin speeds and 3Gb/s SATA interfaces for high-performance PCs, gaming systems and low duty cycle servers. The new drives use 160GB+ per platter technology to deliver up to 500GB of storage capacity in a one-, two- and three-disk design. ...Hitachi profile, storage history

See also:-
article:- Hard Disks - on Wikipedia®

timeline:- 5 Decades of Disk Drive Industry Firsts - on DISK/TREND

Hard Drisk Market Chronicle - Upto 1997

Hard disk reviews (1998 to 2001) - on StorageReview.com
Al Shugart - father of the hard drive.
Find out more about people who have
shaped storage history.
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Disk Jockey - handheld hard disk tool
Disk Jockey handheld USB / Firewire
disk copier / eraser / tester / mirroring tool
from Diskology
.
How Solid is Hard Disk's Future?

What impact will the fast growing solid state disk market have on the overall hard disk market? - is a question I've been asked a lot.

Many of the articles published here on STORAGEsearch.com are written from the SSD perspective.

Is SSDs' gain really HDDs' loss?

In some segments yes. But it's not a zero sum game. ...read the article
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Hard Drive Degaussers sanitize disks  even when they can't be erased using software
Hard Drive Degaussers & Destroyers
from Storage Heaven
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