Category Archives: Storage longevity

Graphene Flash Memory

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Ray

I have been thinking about writing a post on “Is Flash Dead?” for a while now.  Well at least since talking with IBM research a couple of weeks ago on their new memory technologies that they have been working on. … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Data density, Data integrity, Data retention, SSD storage, Storage, storage economics, Storage energy use, Storage longevity, Storage reliability, Strategic Inflection Points, System effectiveness, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

When will disks become extinct?

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Ray

Yesterday, it was announced that Hitachi General Storage Technologies (HGST) is being sold to Western Digital for $4.3B and after that there was much discussion in the tweeterverse about the end of enterprise disk as we know it.  Also, last … Continue reading →

Posted in Data retention, Market dynamics, Storage, Storage architecture, Storage density, storage economics, Storage longevity, Storage performance, Strategic Inflection Points, System effectiveness, Systems | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

EMC Data Domain products enter the archive market

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Ray

In another assault on the tape market, EMC announced today a new Data Domain 860 Archiver appliance. This new system supports both short-term and long-term retention of backup data. This attacks one of the last bastions of significant tape use … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, data protection, Data retention, Storage Backup, Storage longevity | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

SOHO backup options

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Ray

I must admit, even though I have disparaged DVD archive life (see CDs and DVDs longevity questioned) I still backup my work desktops/family computers to DVD and DVDdl disks.  It’s cheap (on sale 100 DVDs cost about $30 and DVDdl … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, data protection, storage economics, Storage longevity, System effectiveness, Tape storage | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The problems with digital audio archives

Posted on December 8, 2010 by Ray

A recent article in Rolling Stone (File Not Found: The Record Industry’s Digital Storage Crisis) laments the fact that digital recordings can go out of service due to format changes, plugin changes, and/or files not being readable (file not found). … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Data availability, data protection, Data readability, Storage longevity, System quality | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The future of data storage is MRAM

Posted on November 30, 2010 by Ray

We have been discussing NAND technology for quite awhile now but this month I ran across an article in IEEE Spectrum titled “a SPIN to REMEMBER – Spintronic memories to revolutionize data storage“. The article discussed a form of magneto-resistive … Continue reading →

Posted in Storage, Storage density, Storage longevity, Storage performance, System effectiveness, Systems | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

What eMLC and eSLC do for SSD longevity

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Ray

I talked last week with some folks from Nimbus Data who were discussing their new storage subsystem.  Apparently it uses eMLC (enterprise Multi-Level Cell) NAND SSDs for its storage and has no SLC (Single Level Cell) NAND at all. Nimbus … Continue reading →

Posted in storage economics, Storage longevity, System quality | Tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Micron’s new P300 SSD and SSD longevity

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Ray

Micron just announced a new SSD drive based on their 34nm SLC NAND technology with some pretty impressive performance numbers.  They used an independent organization, Calypso SSD testing, to supply the performance numbers: Random Read 44,000 IO/sec Random Writes 16,000 IO/sec … Continue reading →

Posted in Block Storage, Storage, Storage drive, Storage longevity, Storage performance | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment