The Chinese want Seagate

The article doesn’t say why the Chinese did not make a play for Western Digital

Chinese Seek to Buy a U.S. Maker of Disk Drives - New York Times

The overture, which was disclosed by the chief executive of one of the two remaining drive makers in the United States, William D. Watkins of Seagate Technology, has resurrected the issues of economic competitiveness and national security raised three years ago when Lenovo, a Chinese computer maker, bought I.B.M.’s personal computer business.

Outsourcing the SAN

This article points to online backup vendors, but also points to the option for building local grid-based storage as an alternative to big, expensive EMC SANS.

Storage 2.0 — Web-based storage is coming

Combine open-source software, distributed storage running on low-cost hardware and the World Wide Web, and what do you get? Storage for as little as 15 cents per gigabyte per month, and another 10 to 20 cents for each gigabyte users upload or download.

That’s a pretty good deal, especially when Andrew Reichman, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., estimates it costs $15 to $25 per gigabyte just to buy the hardware and software needed for secondary (backup or archival) storage, and $50 and up per gigabyte for the primary storage needed for business-critical applications such as stock trading or airline reservations. Neither of these prices take into account ongoing management costs.

LTO4 drives for sale

The next generation  drives offer optimum throughput in backup/restore operations with a native capacity of 800 gigabytes per tape with typical compression techniques yielding 1.6 terabytes per cartridge. The data transfer rate is 120 megabytes per second without compression, and 240 megabytes per second with compression enabled.

The expanded capability of the variable data rate feature in the new drives eases the impact of such high speeds on current systems. LTO 4 drives will continue to stream down to 30 megabytes per second, the same rate that LTO 3 achieved. This makes it feasible to upgrade more legacy installations without incurring the problems caused by low data rates. LTO 4 is backward read and write compatible with LTO 3, and is read compatible with LTO 2 but does not read LTO 1.

Caltech develops nanowire molecular memory

At 80GB in a square inch,  its pushes the density of IBM’s
Millipede design.
 

Finally, holographic storage

InPhase manages to sell 300 gigbytes on a DVD sized platter; complete with jukebox options.  Media will hold 1.6 TB in a couple years.  Data moves at 20 MB/sec

Expensive, but very roomy for Data Archive Safe-stores.

Online knapsacks

You thought rumors of gDrive were far-fetched?

Look at what DivShare offers already.

Sound too good to be true?  They have competition.
(and it isn’t Google).

1TB on a DVD

This looks like a return of the Flourescent Multilayer Disc that was touted by Calimetrics at one time.

The usual suspect in the holographic wars is InPhase