Future of the Hard Drive

But hard drives do not seem to fade away – they still exist and command a strong niche audience. Hard drives are constantly evolving with new inbuilt technologies of recording, confirmation and data guarantee that it is quite ludicrous to even think that hard drives will ever go out of fashion.

In fact, flash drives can be described as a technologically advanced offshoot of the hard drive. Both the hard drive and the flash drive are solid state disks with non-volatile natures. But whereas the hard drive is composed of moving parts of magnetically coated platters, flash drives are composed of non-moving parts. In technical jargon, the flash drive is defined as an electrically charged mechanical drive with software compatibility of a hard drive. The SPARC product directory outlines certain distinguishing features of a flash drive:

The storage medium is not magnetic in nature

The storage medium of a flash drive is solid state semiconductor such as battery-packed RAM, EPROM or other electrically erasable RAM-like chip

Faster access time due to random data access function

Flash drive does not rely on a read/ write interface head synchronising with a rotating disk

Produces highest possible input/output rates

Most effective for usage in server applications

Great resilience to physical vibrations, shock and temperature fluctuations

High cost calculated according to per megabyte of storage

Hard Drive Vs Flash Drive

Lifespan: The mortality period of a hard drive is for a maximum period of five years. Hard drives, though used extensively and produced in mass numbers, are prone to constant failure ranging from mechanical, logical, virus, man-made and natural disasters to corruption. This is primarily because hard drives are made of moving parts i.e. magnetically coated platters which store data. These platters rotate or spin at high speeds and, generally, constant usage results in wear and tear of the platters causing drive damage. In other cases, the platters collide directly with each other i.e. the rotating ends of the platters, the read and write heads crash into each other and the drive stops functioning.

In contrast, the flash drive is made of only non-movable parts and chips. Flash chips are calculated to have an approximate cycle of more 300,000. Flash drives are equipped with an inbuilt balancing algorithm which monitors the times of usage. This gives a user freedom to use the flash drive constantly without fear of wear and tear. In addition, the drive also comes with a special wear and maintenance function which swaps and writes additional extra data on to another block of the drive automatically. This function balances the amount of data stored in one block of the drive making room for more data. In 2001, the introduction of the DRAM cache in the interior of the flash drive also increased its functional abilities along with a boost in lifespan.

Speed of Data Storage and Transfer: Generally, the access time of a flash drive is 35-100 micro-seconds as compared to that of a rotating hard drive which can be calculated at an average rate of 5,000-10,000 micro-seconds. In other words, flash drives are nearly 100 times faster than hard drives. This speed capability is greatly preferred by commercial and service organizations where speed of data storage and transfer forms the crux of every transaction. In addition, it can be argued that the hard drive technology actually limits the potential of an average computer operating system. In short, it means that the hard drive is not able to compete and keep up with the rapid technological advancements of the computer unit. Thus, hard drive performance is limited and slow.

Storage Space: Flash drives usually are manufactured in standard 2.5" and 3.5" sizes. 2.5"-sized flash drives are used in laptops or notebooks while the 3.5"-sized flash drives are used in desktops, JBOD or other SAN/NAS/DAS configurations. In addition, they can also be used to replace traditional disks in storage arrays or in a server's internal disk bays.

Reliability: Flash drives are described as extremely reliable owing to the absence of mechanical arms and spinning platters. It has been noticed that flash drives are physically robust with a rugged exterior. Thus, flash drives prove reliable in demanding, sensitive and mobile environments. Flash drives are equipped to withstand any sort of mechanical or electrical shock including physical vibration as compared to hard drives which are vulnerable to any type of external or internal corruption. Flash drives guarantee data integrity without any danger of data loss. Thus, flash drives are immune to highly combustible materials and electromagnetic radiation.

Data Recovery Articles: http://www.internetionalmedia.com/Category/Data Recovery/

James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. If you are concerned about data loss and would like more information on Data Recovery see www.fields-data-recovery.co.uk

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