eWEEK's Top 10 Storage Stories of 2008

To read the introduction to this Top 10 list, go here:

Data Storage 2008: It Was All About Capacity and the Cloud

Here are Storage Station blogger and eWEEK Senior Writer Chris Preimesberger's Top 10 Storage Stories of the year, somewhat in order of importance:

Feb. 22: Why We're Starting to Trust Storage in the Cloud

Online services such as EMC MozyHome, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), Carbonite and Box.net shot up in popularity in 2008. Most offer unlimited personal or business data storage for anywhere from $50 to $75 per year, depending upon optional features.

Nov. 4: Get Off of My Cloud: Private Cloud Computing Takes Shape

Private cloud computing differs from the mainstream version in that smaller, cloudlike IT systems within a firewall offer similar services, but to a closed internal network. This network may include corporate or division offices, other companies that are also business partners, raw-material suppliers, resellers, production-chain entities and other organizations intimately connected with a corporate mother ship.

Nov. 10: Sun Goes Beyond RAID in Its First Storage Appliance

The Sun Storage 7000 product line is the industry's first open-source storage appliance that can be used in a small IT system—or, using a larger form factor, in a large data center. Probably the most important Sun storage innovation in the company's history.

We at eWEEK know first-hand that there was a lot of interest here. Within 2 hours of posting the story, we recorded about 4,000 page views, and by the end of the first 24-hour period there had been some 34,000 hits on the story.

June 26: Spansion Reveals 'Flash on Steroids'

Designed to replace DRAM (dynamic RAM) in servers, startup Spansion's new EcoRAM aims to cut power draw by 75 percent and increase read/write performance. This might be the biggest advancement in NAND flash technology in 20 years.

Jan. 15: EMC Breaks New Ground with SSDs in Storage Arrays

EMC claimed to be the first enterprise storage vendor to integrate flash-based solid-state drives into its core product portfolio. EMC's 73GB and 146GB SSDs became available as an option in the first quarter in EMC's high-end Symmetrix DMX-4 systems.

Nov. 24: Gifts That Can Save Your Data's Life: Good Portable Storage Options

Capacities keep going up, as do the number of value-added and optional features. And prices keep coming down, much to the joy of buyers and the chagrin of storage executives. "The prices are all market-driven. It's ridiculous how cheap these things are, but it is what it is," Iomega President Jonathan Huberman told eWEEK.

Nov. 10: EMC Launches Atmos, Its First Cloud-Building Platform

EMC showed that it is now officially a next-generation IT creator when it comes to cloud storage development. In November, EMC introduced Atmos, its first cloud-building appliance package—a combination of software and industry-standard x86 server hardware that can result in a multipetabyte, enterprise-level cloud storage infrastructure.

Oct. 15: Iomega Offers 1TB of Network Storage for $300

Iomega introduced the StorCenter ix2, a 1TB-capacity network storage drive with a desktop footprint that the company describes as "smaller than a large dictionary." The price: $300. The StorCenter ix2 is the first co-produced storage drive Iomega has launched since the company's acquisition by storage giant EMC in August.

July 10: Seagate Launches First 1.5TB Desktop Drive

Only about a year after introducing 1TB desktop drives, Seagate Technology unveiled the industry's first 1.5TB desktop drive along with a 500GB (half-terabyte) notebook hard drive.

June 13: IBM Unveils Portable Data Center 'Pods'

IBM's answer to Sun's Project Blackbox and Rackable, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft portables is designed to cut way back on power usage.

And click here to see our Top Personal Storage Products of 2008 slide show.