Stories by Chris Mellor

Magnetic tape virtuality: Not all systems are equally virtuous.

Tape life should be simple, we might think. A physical tape drive is simple to drive: start it, rewind it; stop it; write to it. All a virtual tape drive needs to do is respond appropriately to a backup application when it gets these messages and so ‘fool’ the application into thinking it’s dealing with a real tape drive.

HP claims combined storage array first

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has announced that its MSA1500cs, more formally the HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array 1500, is the first storage array to support either SCSI or Serial ATA (SATA) disk enclosures behind a single controller shelf. It expects to offer both types behind the same controller shelf soon .

Mobiles to see invisible data

Printed images may soon contain hidden data that mobile phones can see and respond to. A telephone number embedded in a CD cover picture will be able to be dialled. And a poster image containing a URL invisible to the human eye will be seen by a PDA camera and the website displayed on its screen.

Adaptec RAIDs IBM storage

Adaptec announced last week it is buying a RAID storage business unit off IBM. The deal will see it license and acquire certain RAID intellectual property, RAID products and expertise from Big Blue and use it to expand and improve on its own RAID products.

New tape rack: same size, double capacity

Storage Technology (StorageTek) has produced a new 100TB tape library that slots into a standard rack size but provides twice as much capacity as competing products.

Seagate redesigns drives

Seagate Technology is preparing a major revamp of its disk drives, and is expected to introduce smaller physical and larger capacity drives in keeping with the rest of the market.

Microsoft calls for disk redesign

Not content with telling hardware manufacturers what they must do, now Microsoft is informing disk makers that they have to make read and write speeds faster. It even tells them how to do it -- add flash memory cache.

Fibre Channel's death prematurely announced

Ethernet economics should overwhelm expensive and lower volume Fibre Channel SANs with iSCSI SANs. That's the received wisdom from commentators such as McData's Tom Clark. Linley Group agree and said that after 2007, Fibre Channel will get increasingly choked as Ethernet SANs overtake it.

Welcome the Ferrari of disk drives

God only knows what you'd do with it, but if monster storage clusters are your thing, you could do worse than check out Dynamic Solutions International Corp.'s new solid state disk systems.

Cisco ships SAN side-door

Cisco Systems is working on a new service that will enable changes to be made to a storage network without affecting the data being sent across it at the same time.

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