In observance of the hard drive's 50th anniversary, we
cajoled our kids into visiting the computer museum in San Jose. Seemed
like an interesting way to get them to understand the technology that
has impregnated their lives.
We unplugged our son's MP3 player white earbuds.
Made him leave his PSP at home.
Turned off our daughter's cellphoneno IMing.
Other than the sheer size, they were totally unimpressed with the
world's first hard drive -- the IBM RAMAC (Random Access Memory for
Accounting and Control) drive.
Our son reached into his pocket and pulled out his Verbatim 4GB USB
flash drive and 8GB USB HD and asked, "So what did they do with the 5MB
refrigerator?"
It's tough to explain to a kid who knows everything that OSs and
apps were smaller then.
After all, he vaguely recalls that photos were printsvideos were in the
theaterphones were attached to the wall by wirepeople wrote/mailed
letters!
Damnwe like progress.
Instant everything. And he wants it all with himall the time.
We remember luggables.
Then portables/subportables.
Now pocket devices.
Next?
Who knows.
But no matter how small the device gets our storage requirements growin
leaps, boundsin megabytes, gigabytes.
The flash folks swear they are going to drive the hard drive into
extinction. Just consider the features -- rugged, zero noise, broad
operating environment, almost zero power requirements, darned good
price/capacity ratio.
They just might if people followed Chris Anderson's long tail
concept (Figure 2).
Once you get away from the top hits (music, video, whatever) demand
and storage requirements should thin out.
Silly consumers.
Flash manufacturers claim there's no need for portable music storage
beyond 4-5GB.
They point out you really only need 32GB on your computer.
15GB for Vista17GB for all your ready-to-use stuff.
The rest?
Delete itoverwrite itsend it somewhere to retire.
Yeah but
These people are engineersflash engineers at that.
They forget - or blow off - the fact that people don't carry just songs
with them anymore.
They "lug" along their video gamestheir photostheir videostheir
music. Then they pack in other people's photosother people's videosTV
programssoccer and other games.
And they need their business presentations/papers, schoolwork, web
downloads, email contacts/directories.
Add Tellywood's DRM (Digital Rights Management) ball and chains.
Suddenly, you're talking serious storage.
Holy C****!
The more storage the industry gives us the more we want.
According to IDC, we create, grab, use, store 50-100% more information
every year.
Over your lifetime you'll accumulate a whopping one petabyte (that's
HUGE!!) of content - messages, web pages, photos, videos, music,
documents, stuff.
No wonder Seagate and Hitachi announced they'll begin shipping small 2
and 2.5TB HDs.
Both flash and HD have great futures - as long as they keep delivering
more capacity without any increase in cost.
What we're starting to see are storage tiers - applications where flash
is best, uses where HD is superior.
The chip may be the new storage kid on the block but it is in such
hot demand (Figure 5).
In fact, NAND flash - used in cameras, phones, MP3 players, flash
cards and USB drives - should hit $16.2 billion this year up 45% over
last year.
We're surprised that MP3 manufacturers haven't taken a leaf from the
phone and camera playbook. You know sell cheap devices with a token of
storage - 256MB of memory plus a flash or USB drive slot.
People are suckers for the low price. Then rack up profits with the
consumables!
Worked for the Zip drive.
Works for printers.
Knock $50 off up front and sell 1-4GB storage for $75 - $200 each.
Spin it right - "Now! You can separate your music genre to fit your
mood," "Keep your party photos separate from the family outing photos,"
"Hide your really private stuff from your what the heck stuff."
It is already being donekinda.
According to InfoTrends more than 30% of the digital camera users never
download photos from the card to their PC, to CD, to the TV.
They simply show folks their photos on the camera.
When one device is fullthey buy another.
Thank you Joe & Jane Consumer.
The flash developers don't think small either.
They see the "logic" for a new flash solid state disk (SSD).
It isn't cheap but for military notebook computers, rough/tough
operating environments and really clumsy users they make a lot of
sense.
And since nothing spins, they are also very power conservative.
Of course you won't find SSDs in any $500 - $800 computer. Or in 30GB
video iPods!
The capacity ground still belongs to HDs.
While IT folks still account for the largest percentage of HD sales
(about 80% according to IDC), the shrunken HDs are the ones that get all
the glamour.
The market for the 2.5-in down to 0.85-in HDs is growing rapidly.
So are the capacities.
Just when 4GB USB flash became price competitive with USB HDs, companies
moved up market to 8GB. Next 10 - 12GB.
With Microsoft's Vista almost ready to be released on the world (we're
at RC 6.4.16 right?) they and Intel are talking up a new breed of
drive.
Call it Piton, Hybrid HD/Robson or ReadyDrive; it marries flash and HD.
The pitch is that the new hybrid will reduce HD power consumption by
reducing the number of times the drive has to spin up to search for
data.
It will also increase the MTBF (mean time between failures) for the
drive.
True.
Of course without this creative marriage it would take 15 minutes to
load Vista.
That's likeforever.
But with all the cheap and portable capacity, we're facing an even
bigger challenge your personal data storage/protection.
Flash people like to point out that another key reason business systems
only need 32GB (of flash storage) is that IT should store all user data
on the network in a central location.
Yeahlike we trust corporate and government data security!
That gives working slobs a warm, fuzzy, safe feeling.
Likewise offsite backup storage with Google or Apple or Microsoft or the
other online storage/recovery services don't fit into our content
storage and protection scheme.
Scott McNealy (chairman of Sun Microsystems) was right when he said "you
have zero privacy anymore. Get over it!"
But we aren't going to simply bend over and let them take their best
shot!
That's why we like - and use - multiple USB flash and HDsand a portable
HDand CD/DVD offline storage.
Every one of these bit buckets has password and encryption just for
added security.
Granted it isn't as 'scientific" as Tellywood's DRM but we feel pretty
comfortable using 128-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) protection
with our storage devicesincluding our notebook computer.
It's good enough for Top Secret document protection and just look how
secure government data is !
We aren't protection paranoid.
We just want to make it a little difficult for them to get our
stuffphotos, videos, data, emails/addresses, passwords, access codes,
presentations, personal/business information.
Having all of that content on your notebook HD is very convenient - ok
cumbersome but convenient. At the same time, without a couple of
security hurdles it is terrifically exposed.
Or you can put it on multiple USB flash/HDs as well as portable storage
(HD, CD, DVD).
These storage devices are a lot easier to take with you, get through
airport security and carry into a classroom or customer's office than
the RAMAC refrigerator.
They are easy to carryeasy to useeasy to lose.
We've looked at the biometric units and they appear to be getting
better.
We've read about the behavior-based trust solutions that bases security
and access based on individual usage characteristics.
When it becomes more mature we're all ready for it.
For right now, we'll put up with the inconvenience of using good-enough
password and encryption protection for our storage devices.
Sure beats the H*** out of Tellywood's DRM (Digital Rights Management).
Took our kid an hour to get past that.
If the security folks could get Tellywood to buy into content protection
that could be assigned to a user rather than a disc they might sell more
stuff.
But they probably didn't experience fair use when they were growing up. |
