Features

• New storage technologies to deal with the data deluge

  Enterprise storage demands are reaching a critical point, and vendors are scrambling to develop new products to deal with the data deluge. We look at how these technologies will help manage the major pain points for storage administrators.

• How big is the sound of music?

  Music fans and major recording artists are adopting lossless audio file formats to keep copies of their music thats as close to a master recording as possible, leading to multi-terabyte-sized home music storage systems.

• Tape storage finds new life in the enterprise and beyond

  Tape is not dead - far from it. In fact, many enterprises depend on it for cost-effective long-term storage. Tape is also finding new applications in the virtualized and increasingly video-centric world of IT. As enterprises deal with bigger sets of data, tape will play a vital role going forward.

• 2012: The year in quotes

  Some of the most memorable IT-related quotes were uttered in courtrooms this year, which involved a steady stream of legal challenges about intellectual property. In no particular order, these are some of the comments that stuck with us as 2012 winds to a close.

• "The Human Face of Big Data" offers a geek-out-worthy coffee-table book

  "The Human Face of Big Data" is an ambitious and attractive new large-format book that aims to give readers, through photography and short articles, a glimpse of how powerful new data processing capabilities are changing people's lives. Author Rick Smolan is a photographer who gained fame for his "Day in the Life" series, which included an edition focused on the Internet in 1996, "24 Hours in Cyberspace." He says that his latest work is based on the premise that "our planet is beginning to develop a nervous system."

• The evolution of hard disk drives

  A punched card was once the basis for digital information used for computer programs and data storage. They were widely used throughout the first half of the 20th century in processing machines to input data and to store it. Punch cards could be fed into the first commercial computer, IBM 305 system, which then stored the data on hard disks

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  Delorean hard drive is perfect for time machine

  Attention all Back To The Future fans: If you're in the market for a new hard drive, then the folks over at Flash Rods have something just for you. Flash Rods latest, known as the Delorean Time Machine Hard Drive, contains a 500GB Seagate drive within the chassis of the much-loved Delorean from the Back To The Future trilogy.

• Burning questions: Virtualisation

  Virtualizing x86 infrastructure isn't just a one-step process -- as servers change, the whole data center must change as well. While server hypervisors such as VMware's ESX, Microsoft's Hyper-V and Xen can make IT more efficient and cost-effective, many of the virtualization advantages can be canceled out when data centers rely on technology and processes that haven't been updated for the virtualization age.

• NASs for the masses

  Either because server disks are full or because virtualization is a natural growth path, organizations large and small are moving toward shared storage. For large enterprises, high-capacity storage-area networks make sense, but what about small or mid-sized enterprises new to shared storage?

• A waste of space: Bulk of drive capacity still underutilized

  Near the turn of the century, data centers were only beginning to implement Fibre Channel storage-area networks (SAN), with most relying on direct-attached storage (DAS). Data utilization rates were abysmal, with data centers on average using just 25% to 30% of their hard disk drive capacity.

• Beauty shots: Technology to drool over

  Sling Media's small Slingbox 700U won one of three Best in Show awards given by the Industrial Designers Society of America (ISDA).

• Acronis Drive Monitor Is S.M.A.R.T. about hard drives

  Your hard disk is a time bomb, waiting to go off. If you're lucky, like most people, it will never detonate. But if you're unlucky, like some people, you could lose all of your files, works, and applications, with no warning when your hard disk crashes. Acronis Drive Monitor (free) promises to give you warning before that crash, so that you can take action before you're hit with disaster.

• Seagate GoFlex packs streaming and backup punch

  Seagate has announced a new network attached storage (NAS) drive for the 'Terabyte home', the GoFlex Home.

• Nimble's all-in-one storage combines primary and backup in one box

  Start-up Nimble Storage came out of the development stage this week with its first product -- an array that combines solid state drives (SSD) with high-capacity, cost and performance serial ATA (SATA) hard drives, acts as primary and backup storage and replicates offsite for disaster recovery.

• Lab notes: Kingston vs. VelociRaptor storage smackdown

  It's time for a storage upgrade, but your budget won't bear the burden of both a blazing new VelociRaptor hard drive and an extra injection of Kingston RAM. Decision time: if you're looking to improve general performance on the cheap, do you shell out for more RAM or a high-performance hard disk?