Rapid Expert Consultation on Archival Data Storage Technologies for the Intelligence Community (2024) / Chapter Skim
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Current Data Storage Technologies
Current Data Storage Technologies
Pages 5-20
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From page 5... ...
MAGNETIC STORAGE: HARD DISK DRIVES HDDs and magnetic tape systems are based on magnetic media. These are well-proven, robust technologies that have been in use for several decades.
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As shown in Figure 2, in the 2000s, the areal density growth for HDDs was about 39 percent per year. Figure 2 also shows a decrease in the 2009 to 2018 timeframe, with a rate of about 7.6 percent per year.
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SOURCE: Information Storage Industry Consortium (INSIC) , 2019, 2019 INSIC Technology Roadmap, July, https://www.insic.org/wpcontent/uploads/2019/07/INSIC-Applications-and-Systems-Roadmap.pdf.
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From page 8... ...
The expectation for HAMR is between 15–25 percent compound annual growth rate. That said, the super-paramagnetic effect, a physical limit on the amount of data that can be stored on a hard disk, poses long-term challenges to the future scaling rates of HDDs.
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From page 9... ...
Sanitization Magnetic storage technologies such as HDDs and magnetic tapes typically undergo media sanitization at the end of the product life cycle to ensure that all sensitive information stored on the magnetic recording medium cannot be accessed by some specified level of retrieval effort. Depending on the confidentiality level of the data stored in the magnetic storage device and the risk tolerances an organization deems acceptable, there exists an array of different sanitization 10 Information Storage Industry Consortium, 2019, "Tape Roadmap INSIC Report, 2019," Monroe, VA.
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From page 10... ...
While the magnetic tape sector is relatively small, demand for data storage technologies is driving steady investment and ongoing maturation of tape storage media. In general, magnetic tape has less areal storage capacity than HDDs.
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According to these consortium estimates, it should be possible to continue scaling tape technology at historical rates for at least the next decade before tape begins to face challenges related to the same super-paramagnetic effect limiting HDDs. 13 Indeed, as Figure 2 indicates, the 2019 Information Storage Industry Consortium roadmap assumed continuation of the historical 34 percent growth rate for the tape areal density, corresponding to a 40 percent annual increase in media capacity and a concomitant decrease in cost.
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NAND flash was introduced in 1987 and is typically used for data storage, typically in conjunction with a flash memory controller or processor in an SSD. The controller, or processor, provides physical to logical data mapping, media management, and error correction functions.
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The NAND supply chain has gone through a consolidation process that drives supplier concentration, given the tremendous capital intensity, competitiveness, and cyclicality of the NAND flash market. In 2022, the top four suppliers (Samsung; Kioxia and Western Digital; SK Hynix and Solidigm; and Micron)
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The fact that SSDs have no moving parts and store data via electric charge helps to protect against several threat scenarios, although radiation and electromagnetic pulses are areas of potential vulnerability. The most sophisticated SSD controller technology, with appropriate error correction as well as redundancy, can help maximize the reliability of SSDs using the most advanced NAND flash technology.
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From page 15... ...
MRAM uses magnetic storage elements to store data, making it fast, durable, and energy efficient. MRAM could be an ideal long-term storage solution for smaller amounts of data that need to be safely stored and quickly available when needed, but it is not a candidate at this time for enterprise-scale archival storage.
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From page 16... ...
With its fastwrite capability, MRAM enables fast and secure software updates -- for example, it performs over-theair deployments in automotive implementations. The MRAM supply chain is still evolving, with embedded MRAM offerings at foundries pertaining to node availability as well as functionality.
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CURRENT OPTICAL STORAGE Optical data storage uses a physical medium -- usually a rotating disc -- on which data are recorded by etching patterns that can be read back using a low-power laser. Optical data storage was first developed by IBM in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but various early forms of optical storage were never widely adopted.
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Because optical data storage media are written and read with lasers, they suffer from areal density limitations set by the diffraction limit of the laser light used. Current optical data storage media have significantly lower areal densities than HDDs -- for example, Blu-Ray discs have an areal density of 12.5 Gbit/in2.
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Different levels of a storage hierarchy may need to be migrated to new storage technologies over time. • Assuring security of stored data and controlling and auditing access.
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From page 20... ...
For other applications, it may be preferrable for an organization to build its own data centers, which includes hiring and maintaining a data center operations team. The scale of the data storage footprint required, as well as ingress and egress and physical control and security considerations, are major factors in the decision process to determine which solution best addresses need.
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