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Hard Disk Drives: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly!: HDDs are like the bread in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Published: 01 September 2007 Publication History

Abstract

HDDs are like the bread in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich—sort of an unexciting piece of hardware necessary to hold the “software.” They are simply a means to an end. HDD reliability, however, has always been a significant weak link, perhaps the weak link, in data storage. In the late 1980s people recognized that HDD reliability was inadequate for large data storage systems so redundancy was added at the system level with some brilliant software algorithms, and RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) became a reality. RAID moved the reliability requirements from the HDD itself to the system of data disks. Commercial implementations of RAID range from n+1 configurations (mirroring) to the more common RAID-4 and RAID-5, and recently to RAID-6, the n+2 configuration that increases storage system reliability using two redundant disks (dual parity). Additionally, reliability at the RAID group level has been favorably enhanced because HDD reliability has been improving as well.

References

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Cited By

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  • (2012)A study of soft error consequences in hard disk drivesIEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2012)10.1109/DSN.2012.6263936(1-8)Online publication date: Jun-2012
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Published In

cover image Queue
Queue  Volume 5, Issue 6
File Systems and Storage
September/October 2007
52 pages
ISSN:1542-7730
EISSN:1542-7749
DOI:10.1145/1317394
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 September 2007
Published in QUEUE Volume 5, Issue 6

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Cited By

View all
  • (2014)Beyond MTTDLACM Transactions on Storage10.1145/257738610:2(1-21)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2014
  • (2012)Planning and Managing the “Cost of Compromise” for AV Retention and AccessSMPTE Motion Imaging Journal10.5594/j18133121:1(32-38)Online publication date: Feb-2012
  • (2012)A study of soft error consequences in hard disk drivesIEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2012)10.1109/DSN.2012.6263936(1-8)Online publication date: Jun-2012
  • (2010)Improving Burst Error Tolerance of LDPC-Centric Coding Systems in Read ChannelIEEE Transactions on Magnetics10.1109/TMAG.2009.203401246:3(933-941)Online publication date: Mar-2010
  • (2010)Improving Disk Array Reliability Through Expedited ScrubbingProceedings of the 2010 IEEE Fifth International Conference on Networking, Architecture, and Storage10.1109/NAS.2010.37(119-125)Online publication date: 15-Jul-2010
  • (2010)Modern Hard Disk Drive Systems: Fundamentals and Future TrendsMemory Mass Storage10.1007/978-3-642-14752-4_4(169-212)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2010
  • (2009)Triple-Parity RAID and BeyondQueue10.1145/1661785.16701447:11(30-39)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2009
  • (2009)Evaluating the Impact of Irrecoverable Read Errors on Disk Array ReliabilityProceedings of the 2009 15th IEEE Pacific Rim International Symposium on Dependable Computing10.1109/PRDC.2009.66(379-384)Online publication date: 16-Nov-2009
  • (2008)On the Possibility of Small, Service-Free Disk Based Storage SystemsProceedings of the 2008 Third International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security10.1109/ARES.2008.98(56-63)Online publication date: 4-Mar-2008

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