In the beginning, IBM created the hard drive and it was good. People thought to themselves, “Who could ever need more than five megabytes of storage?” Then came the information revolution and everything started changing. As the information bubble grew, so did storage space to accommodate everything within IT. Today the world runs on Terrabyte and Picabyte storage solutions. Where will it all end? The story of the hard drive is a story not unfamiliar to all of us within the IT business. This first hard drive used primarily Magnetic Flux Modification (MFM) technology as a means of storage. These HDDs were controlled by often huge cards with processing power sometimes rivaling that of the then best processors. Then somebody saw that all was not good. They invented IDE. For generations of PCs, the IDE or ATA HDD would be the lifeblood, carrying the information from day to day. The IDE interface with the intelligence seated on the HDD would soon become obsolete. The next revolution would be SATA. But will SATA be able to deliver?

Magnetic Storage: The HDD relies on magnetic storage. Magnetic bits are arranged end to end on a ferrous disc. When the read/write head moves over and performs a function, the magnetic bits change their magnetic state as to present a 1 or a 0. Some manufacturers have now started using perpendicular technology to try and squeeze some more space out of the existing platters. But as time goes by, we will have to start looking at other means of storage.

Solid State Storage: This technology is not new. It has been around for years in the form of NAND flash chips used in the BIOS or as storage device in devices such as cell phones and palmtops. The problem lies in that these devices are not currently very fast. Sure, these days they come in sizes up to 4Gb and they are still expanding the range. To better understand what happens here, we have to look at the various ways these tiny devices store the information. The way these devices work is by using tiny NAND gates within the chip to store information. These gates can be changed at a certain speed which is determined by the type of switching transistors used within the device. Currently they rely on mostly dated technology to drive down manufacturing costs as using the faster type of switching transistors may prove more expensive. But as time goes by these will also come down in price.

Where to from here? Yes, the future of storage technology is set to be awe inspiring. What will the next step be? We might be using quantum storage technologies which will use the fabric of space-time itself to store information. Not too long ago IBM was working on a storage device about the size of a postage stamp that could hold more data than the HDD available at that time. Maybe we will see such devices in the future. Another possibility is to encode data using DNA. For now we will just need to wait and see.

PS: I think we owe a big thank-you to the first inventor of flash drives, whoever he/she may be (I’m not really sure). THANK YOU. I know that I would be lost without my flash disk and flash-based MP3 player, as would many other people I know.