Chapter 18: The Future of Disks and Disk Management

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How prepared are you to meet the disk needs of the future in order to keep up with storage demands? Where exactly is the industry going and how big can disks get? Will disks be around forever? This chapter investigates what is just out or about to come out in the disk management field, as well as what is on the horizon and perhaps just beyond. It includes a discussion of current and expected speeds of hard disks, faster data transfer, and disk densities, as well as the specifics of various disks out there on the market or expected to be soon.

The Storage Industry Is Healthy

The last couple of years have been rather unkind to the tech industry as a whole. PC sales have slumped, actually declining in the United States for the first time. The formerly booming world of broadband has narrowed considerably, highlighted by the demise of such previous high fliers as Global Crossing, Rhythm Networks, and WorldCom. Even traditional industry stalwarts such as AT&T have faltered badly in the telecom shuffle — AT&T has gone from investing tens of billions into broadband via acquisitions and infrastructure buildup to selling its broadband division to Comcast at a steep discount. Further, dot.coms have bombed across the board, leaving few survivors from the wave of hysteria that gripped us only two or three years ago.

But, despite all the bad news, the fundamental requirements for sound basic technology are still there. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the storage arena. Driven by the need for information sharing and increasing usage of multimedia applications, the demand for storage capacity shows no signs of abating. In fact it just keeps rising every year. According to Forrester Research (Cambridge, Massachusetts) enterprise storage requirements are growing at about 52 percent annually, and the storage industry is responding by coming up with bigger, better, and faster disk drives at a rapid rate in order to keep up with the incredible demand.

In fact, storage capacity is actually outstripping Moore's law, an oft-quoted law that states that CPUs double in size every 18 months or so. The drive industry, in comparison, has been setting a much faster pace. According to a briefing given by Maxtor Corporation (Milpitas, California), drive capacity has been increasing at 100 to 140 percent annually. Other drive manufacturers are making similar claims.

Besides disk size, several other crucial changes are taking shape that will have a major effect on disk performance. Disk speed is going to soar after a period of relative inactivity, and disk management capabilities will be increased once again. During the following examination of advances on each of these fronts, remember that the advancement rate is so fast that very soon the figures and information given below may well be dated.

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