Largest Storage Drive in History

Largest Storage Drive In History

By Joe Purcell
Expert Author
Article Date: 2011-08-29

IBM just broke another record by creating the largest hard drive in history. The 120 petabyte drive is 10 times larger than the previous record holder and can hold 24 billion songs.

The history of hard drives has been an exponential one. A photo taken by Ian Wilson published on Wikipedia exemplifies this progress which shows a 5.25" 110 MB hard drive (right) next to a 2.5" 6,495 MB hard drive (left):

As MIT's Technology Review article explains, the racks of hard drives in this new system must be cooled by water; fans are not enough to maintain cool temperatures. They have also developed techniques to allow the computer using the massive storage drive to work at nearly full speed in the event of a drive failure. The technique involves rate limiting the rebuild speed of the replacement drive according to the severity of failure. If just one drive has failed it will rebuild the drive slowly, and the more failures the fast it will rebuild.

Another important aspect of this storage drive is that it uses General Parallel File System (GPFS) which was designed by IBM in 1998 for high-performance hard drives. The file system allows multiple computers to access files at the same time. Any given file is split up and placed on multiple drives which allows for parallel reading and writing.

The deluge of data poses a significant problem for both research and corporate institutions. The use of supercomputers and systems with 120 petabyte hard drives will become more attainable in the near future and these advancements will give way to even greater ones.

About the Author:
Joe Purcell is a technology virtuoso, cyberspace frontiersman, and connoisseur of Linux, Mac, and Windows alike.