White paper - Alternative Storage Technologies

Alternative Storage Technologies Whitepaper

HELIUM DRIVES Modern hard drives have traditionally not been air- tight. Modern helium large capacity drives are her- metically sealed to offer more storage per square inch, run cooler than air-filled hard drives and use less power to spin the discs thanks to helium’s lower resistance. The increased storage capacity is an obvious benefit, and running cooler is a huge advantage. Many hard drives succumb to data-de- stroying damage as a result of overheating. Helium drives make this possibility far less likely. These drives are already available in the market, they are expensive, but the decreased risk of data loss by overheating might be worth it. However, these drives still have moving parts and use mag- netic particles, bringing up the risk of data loss by mechanical or magnetic forces.

SHINGLED MAGNETIC RECORDING (SMR) SMR is a new way hard drives record data. Hard drives with this technology push tracks closer to- gether with higher aerial densities. Data is stacked like shingles on a roof, increasing storage capacity in the same amount of space. Over time, the stored data is trimmed without compromising the content, making the storage ca- pacity even greater. Because the read head is small- er than the write head, the data can be read even after trimming. One downsize is slower random writes. SMR drives use large write heads relative to the width of the tracks of bits, so writing one track affects the next tracks of bits too. This limits SMR drives to sequen- tial writing, where the next tracks don't matter. To do random writes (such as changes to data on the drive already), data must be arranged sequentially in cache, by the drive in this case, and entire sec- tions of the drive must be rewritten sequentially.

SMR vs. Traditional HDD