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Data Storage

Submission + - Everspin launches non-volatile MRAM that's 500 times faster than NAND (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Alternative memory standards have been kicking around for decades as researchers have struggled to find the hypothetical holy grail — a non-volatile, low-latency, low-cost product that could scale from hard drives to conventional RAM. NAND flash has become the high-speed, non-volatile darling of the storage industry, but if you follow the evolution of the standard, you’ll know that NAND is far from perfect. The total number of read/write cycles and data duration if the drive isn’t kept powered are both significant problems as process shrinks continue scaling downward. Thus far, this holy grail remains elusive, but a practical MRAM (Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory) solution took a step towards fruition this week. Everspin has announced that it’s shipping the first 64Mb ST-MRAM in a DDR3-compatible module. These modules transfer data at DDR3-1600 clock rates, but access latencies are much lower than flash RAM, promising an overall 500x performance increase over conventional NAND."
Data Storage

Submission + - Cache of the titans: Are SSD accelerators any good? (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "When solid-state drives first broke into the consumer market, there were those who predicted the new storage format would supplant hard drives in a matter of years thanks to radically improved performance. In reality, the shift from hard drives (HDDs) to SSDs has thus far been confined to the upper end of the PC market. For cost-conscious buyers and OEMs, the higher performance they offer is still too expensive and the total capacity is insufficient. SSD cache drives have emerged as a means of addressing this situation. They are small, typically containing between 20-60GB of NAND flash and are paired with a standard hard drive. Once installed, drivers monitor which applications and files are accessed most often, then cache those files on the SSD. It can take the software 1-2 runs to start caching data, but once this process is complete, future access and boot times are significantly enhanced. ExtremeTech compares the effect of SSD cache solutions — Intel Smart Response Technology, and Nvelo Dataplex — on the performance of a VelociRaptor, and a slow WD Caviar drive. The results are surprisingly positive."
Data Storage

Submission + - Can a regular person repair a damaged hard drive? (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "There's a lot of FUD when it comes to self-repairing a broken hard drive. Does sticking it in the freezer help? The oven? Hitting it with a hammer? Does replacing the PCB actually work? Can you take the platters out and put them in another drive? And failing all that, if you have to send the dead drive off to a professional data recovery company, how much does it cost — and what's their chance of success, anyway? They're notoriously bad at obfuscating their prices, until you contact them directly. Joel Hruska — who recently had an important drive die (without any up-to-date backups!) — tries to answer these questions and strip away the FUD over at ExtremeTech."
Data Storage

Submission + - New manufacturing technology enables vertical 3D transistors (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Applied Materials has taken the wraps off a new etching system meant to turn vertically stacked, three-dimensional transistors from lab experiments into commercial reality. The new Centura Avatar solves multiple problems facing manufacturers who are interested in 3D NAND but find their current equipment not up to the task of actually building it. According to the folks at Applied Materials, trying to build 3D NAND structures in real life would be like trying to dig a one-kilometer-deep, three-kilometer-long trench with walls exactly three meters apart, through interleaved rock strata — and that’s before we discuss gate trenches or the staircases. While this machine specifically targets 3D NAND today, a number of the challenges to scaling flash memory apply to scaling CPU logic as well. As for when 3D chips will be available for commercial purchase, Applied Materials was vague on that point, but personally I would expect to see companies adopting the new etch equipment in the next few years."
Data Storage

Submission + - 30 Blu-ray discs in a 1.5TB MiniDisc-like cassette (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Hot on the heels of the most successful storage mediums of all time — MiniDisc and Zip disks — Sony has announced the Optical Disc Archive, a system that seems to cram up to 30 Blu-ray discs into a single, one-inch-thick plastic cassette, which will have a capacity of between 300GB and 1.5TB. As far as I can tell, the main selling point of the Optical Disc Archive is, just like MiniDisc, the ruggedness of the cassettes. Optical discs themselves are fairly resistant to changes in temperature and humidity, and the cassettes are dust and water resistant. What is the use case for these 1.5TB MiniDiscs, though? In terms of pure storage capacity, tape drives are still far superior (you can store up to 5TB on a tape!) In terms of speed and flexibility, hard drives are better. If you’re looking for ruggedness, flash-based storage is smaller, lighter, and can easily survive a dip in the ocean. The Optical Disc Archive might be good as extensible storage for TV PVRs, like TiVo and Sky+ — but as yet, we don't even know the cost of the system or the cassettes, and I doubt either will be cheap."
Data Storage

Submission + - Seagate hits 1 terabit per square inch (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Seagate has demonstrated the first terabit-per-square-inch hard drive, almost doubling the areal density found in modern hard drives. Initially this will result in 6TB 3.5-inch desktop drives and 2TB 2.5-inch laptop drives, but eventually Seagate is promising up to 60TB and 20TB respectively. To achieve such a huge leap in density, Seagate had to use a technology called heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). Basically, the main issue that governs hard drive density is the size of each magnetic 'bit.' These can only be made so small until the magnetism of nearby bits affects them. With HAMR, 'high density' magnetic compounds that can withstand further miniaturization are used. The only problem is that these materials, such as iron platinum alloy, are more stubborn when it comes to writing data — but if you heat it first, that problem goes away. With HAMR, Seagate has strapped a laser to the hard drive head; when it wants to write data, the laser turns on. Reading data is still done conventionally, without the laser. In theory, HAMR should allow for areal densities up to 10 terabits per square inch (magnetic sites that are just 1nm long!), and thus desktop hard drives in the 60TB range."
Cloud

Submission + - Google close to launching cloud storage 'Google Drive' (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "It’s one of Silicon Valley’s greatest pink elephants: Why doesn’t Google offer a cloud storage service to rival Dropbox, Box.net, or Microsoft’s SkyDrive? Google has the most internet-connected servers in the world, the largest combined storage of any web company, and already offers photo storage (Picasa), document storage (Docs), music storage (Music), but for some reason it has never offered a unified Google Drive. According to people familiar with the matter, however, our wait is almost over: Google’s Hard Drive In The Sky is coming soon, possibly 'within weeks.' Feature-wise, it sounds like Google Drive will be comparable to Dropbox, with free basic storage (5GB?) and additional space for a yearly fee. Will that be enough to set it apart from other cloud storage providers, though? With Microsoft's SkyDrive being deeply integrated into Windows 8 and WP8, will Google squeeze Drive into Android and Chrome OS? Google is years behind with Google Drive — it will need something juicy to make the service worthwhile."
Data Storage

Submission + - Femtolaser-switched magnetic storage (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Hold onto your hats: Scientists at the University of York, England have completely rewritten the rules of magnetic storage. Instead of switching a magnetic region using a magnetic field (like a hard drive head), the researchers have managed to switch a ferrimagnetic nanoisland using a 60-femtosecond laser. Storing magnetic data using lasers is up to 1,000 times faster than writing to a conventional hard drive (we're talking about gigabytes or terabytes per second) — and the ferrimagnetic nanoislands that store the data are capable of storage densities that are some 15 times greater than existing hard drive platters. Unfortunately the York scientists only detailed writing data with lasers; there's no word on how to read it."
Cloud

Submission + - What happens to your files when a cloud service sh (extremetech.com) 2

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Megaupload's shutdown poses an interesting question: What happens to all the files that were stored on the servers? XDA-Developers, for example, has more than 200,000 links to Megaupload — and this morning, they're all broken, with very little hope of them returning. What happens if a similar service, like Dropbox, gets shut down — either through bankruptcy, or federal take-down? Will you be given a chance to download your files, or helped to migrate them to another similar service? What about data stored on enterprise services like Azure or AWS — are they more safe?"
Data Storage

Submission + - IBM builds 120PB cluster out of 200,000 hard disks (extremetech.com) 2

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Smashing all known records by some margin, IBM Research Almaden, California, has developed hardware and software technologies that will allow it to strap together 200,000 hard drives to create a single storage cluster of 120 petabytes — 120 million gigabytes. The drive collective, when it is complete, is expected to store one trillion files — or to put it in Apple terms, two billion hours of MP3 music. The data repository, which currently has no name, is being developed for an unnamed customer, but with a capacity of 120PB, its most likely use will be the storage device for a governmental (or Facebook) supercomputer. With IBM's GPFS (General Parallel File System), over 30,000 files can be created per second — and with massive parallelism, and no doubt thanks to the 200,000 individual drives in the array, single files can be read or written at several terabytes per second."

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