HDS survey unveils storage practices

Over 50% of respondents to a Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) survey reveal they keep their digital files on five different storage devices, including cameras, USB pens and memory cards, states Zycko.

Such results show business practices when it comes to storage are filtering down to consumer technological use, Alec Selvon-Bruce, global storage solutions consultant at HDS tells Macworld.

The need to cope with growing digital databases and files that have to be easily accessed but secure at the same time, is presenting some challenges to the industry, he continues.

DataCore Software is turning to the channel to sell its storage virtualisation software, according to Enterprise Storage Forum.

The company has inked reseller agreements with Tech Data and Ingram Micro in recent days to do just that.

The partnerships suggest storage virtualisation is emerging as a revenue opportunity for value-added resellers and as a promising investment for companies eager to maximise money and data centre resources in a depressed economy.

To increase the storage density on computer disks, researchers might have to rethink the concepts of magnetic data storage, says EE Times Asia.

While in the past the focus was on optimising the materials for storage, researchers have found a different approach that could help to increase storage density by an order of magnitude.

The researchers succeeded in generating very small magnetic zones in a material by irradiating the surface with highly focused ion beams. The method can generate magnetic domains as small as five nanometres to 10 nanometres, which would enable manufacturers to tenfold the magnetic density if successfully adapted to industrial processes.