Beatingo, Dave Bryan J.

Assignment #1

ADVANCED OS AND NETWORKING

1. What are the different types of direct access storage devices?

 A direct-access storage device (DASD) is another name for secondary storage
devices that store data in discrete locations with a unique address, such as
hard disk drives, optical drives and most magnetic storage devices. Secondary
storage devices are generally separated into three types:
o magnetic storage devices, such as hard disk drives
o optical storage devices, such as CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs
o solid state storage devices, such as solid state drives and USB memory
sticks
2. Which type of DASD do you prefer for storing records and why?  
 The type of DASD I prefer for storing records is solid state storage devices
because much faster access times than other types of device and are more
durable.
3. Conduct research on the future directions for external storage technologies. (Cite
your sources)
 Helium Drives
o Helium-filled hard drives have lately been pushing the capacity
boundaries of hard drives, which are typically filled with air. Last
September, Western Digital announced the world’s first 10TB hard
drive, just a few weeks after Seagate announced its 8TB air-filled hard
drive (the largest hard drive at the time). By using helium instead of air,
helium-filled drives use less power to spin the disks (which spin more
easily thanks to less resistance compared to air), they run cooler, and
they can pack in more disks. This summer, Backblaze created a 360TB
Storage Pod with 45 HGST 8TB drives and found these to be tops for
data load tests. At $0.068 per GB for the 8TB HGST helium drive (About
$550 on Amazon. Seagate helium drives have a lower cost per GB,
however.), the technology is still expensive. Still, these high
performance drives will likely only get cheaper and even more
expansive—perhaps affordable enough even for consumer use. -
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/data-storage-technologies-of-the-
future/
 Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR)
o SMR is a new hard drive recording technology. As with helium-filled
drives, SMR technology allows for higher capacity on hard drives than
traditional storage methods. As Seagate explains it:
 o SMR achieves higher areal densities by squeezing tracks closer
together. Tracks overlap one another, like shingles on a roof, allowing
more data to be written to the same space. As new data is written, the
drive tracks are trimmed, or shingled. Because the reader element on
the drive head is smaller than the writer, all data can still be read off
the trimmed track without compromise to data integrity or reliability.
In addition, traditional reader and writer elements can be used for
SMR. This does not require significant new production capital to be
used in a product, and will enable SMR-enabled HDDs to help keep
costs low. - https://www.backblaze.com/blog/data-storage-
technologies-of-the-future/
 DNA
o Perhaps the strangest new storage technology of the future is DNA.
Yes, the molecule that stores biological information could be used to
store other kinds of data. Harvard researchers in 2012 were able to
encode DNA with digital information, including a 53,400-word book in
HTML, eleven JPEG images, and one JavaScript program. DNA offers
incredible storage density, 2.2 petabytes per gram, which means that a
DNA hard drive about the size of a teaspoon could fit all of the world’s
data on it—every song ever composed, book ever written, video ever
shared. Besides the space savings, DNA is ideal for long-term storage:
While you’re lucky if your hard drive lasts four years and optical disks
are susceptible to heat and humidity, lead Harvard researcher George
Church says “You can drop DNA wherever you want, in the desert or
your backyard, and it will be there 400,000 years later.”

DNA takes a long time to read and write to and, as you might imagine,
the technology is still too expensive to be usable now. According to
New Scientist, in one recent study the cost to encode 83 kilobytes was
£1000 (about $1,500 U.S. dollars). Still, scientists are encoding
information into artificial DNA and adding it to bacteria. It’s like a sci-fi
novel that’s currently being written and lived. DNA could be the
ultimate eternal drive one day. - https://www.backblaze.com/blog/data-
storage-technologies-of-the-future/