The cost of flash storage is reducing, but it is not reducing much faster than the reduction in storage costs for
magnetic disk. Meanwhile, organizations are being challenged to store ever greater quantities of raw data, usually ruling out a complete con-version to flash storage.
By moving less frequently accessed data off
magnetic disk and onto alternatives with much lower power consumption, significant electricity savings can be achieved.
The US Department of Defense has an often-quoted specification for data shredding on
magnetic disk media.
Storage technologies, such as WORM on
magnetic disk, enable the "locking down" of data, enabling corporations to prove it has not been tampered with or deleted, but with the responsiveness and reliability of
magnetic disk and its associated RAID protection.
A major U.S
magnetic disk drive maker, with a manufacturing plant in South East Asia, currently is using an automated inspection system from Tamar Technology to inspect disk drive heads.
Today's lubrication systems -- such as the fluorocarbon compounds and carbon overcoats used on
magnetic disk drives -- may not be adequate to meet the demanding performance requirements envisioned for nanotechnology applications.
Fujitsu put the blame on a sharp fall in demand for personal computers, mobile phones and other IT-related products, which it said would cut into its sales of semiconductors such as flash memory chips and
magnetic disk drives for personal computers.
It has recently been doubling every 8 to 12 months in
magnetic disk storage and about every 24 months in MO storage, according to DISK/TREND, Inc., a market research firm in Mountain View, Calif.
"When applications like SMSC use
magnetic disk drives to store the messages, the computer spends a lot of its time just waiting for the storage devices to complete mechanical disk accesses," said Mike Casey, vice president of marketing at Solid Data Systems.
International sales of small form-factor
magnetic disk drives were also lower, and were impacted by falling market prices.
Porting these products to 64-bit systems has allowed them to use more memory, although it is still secondary to their use of
magnetic disk.
Johnson is president and CEO of Komag, Inc., a San Jose, CA-based manufacturer of
magnetic disk media.