Fusing 200,000 hard drives creates one spectacular storage center
It wasn't that long ago that desktop and notebook computers came with just enough hard drive space to get you by. These days, however, most new systems come with ample storage space for the majority of the population, but power users still might find their drives filling up quite quickly with music, movies, and games. But fear not, media lovers, IBM can build you a data drive with 120 petabytes of storage to hold every music, movie, and picture you've ever seen — and all you need is a deep bank account and a team of computer scientists to build it.
The ambitious project is currently underway at IBM, where researchers are working with 200,000 individual hard drives to create the single largest digital storage space known to man. When complete, the drive will have 120 million gigabytes of capacity, which is enough room to store roughly 24 million feature length HD movies. The epic drive also allows old or broken components to be swapped out without losing any data or requiring costly downtime.
IBM is crafting the custom storage center for an unnamed client that needs to perform massive simulations. The company hasn't revealed the cost of the project, but with IBM engineers taking on the task, you can bet it's not being built for a home office.
Technology Review via Engadget
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