Mission for New Storage Group: Promote HDD, Hybrid Drives

OK, so where exactly is my data? Ask that simple question inside most large enterprises, and you likely will not get a simple answer, because generally data resides in chunks all over the place.

So, in an effort to help others answer that question (especially those in Europe where it’s the law to know where data is physically located), Hitachi GST, Seagate, Toshiba and WD announced the creation of a new organization, the Storage Products Association (SPA), to help with this problem.

The SPA made its debut at the annual Flash Memory Summit at the Santa Clara, Calif., Convention Center, where participants from member companies participated in a panel titled, “Solid State Hybrid Drives Help Meet Today’s Storage Requirements” to discuss the roles of hard disk drives and solid state hybrid drives. John Rydning, IDC research vice president for hard disk drives, moderated the panel.

“HDDs are a crucial technology for storing the ever-expanding data that humans and our machines are generating,” conference director Tom Coughlin, president of storage industry analyst firm Coughlin Associates, said. “Hard disk drives combined with flash memory can provide users the speed they need while providing affordable mass storage.

“With continued development of advanced storage technology and storage architectures these amazing storage devices will provide a home for the world’s accessible data and serve every type of content users for many years to come.”

The Storage Products Association aims to help storage manufacturers and users understand and support current and future storage trends and advancements, including the key role of hard disk drives and solid state hybrid drives, in an effective storage mix for all consumer and business environments. SSHDs combine a small, fast and affordable amount of NAND flash memory with a traditional hard drive to accelerate performance without sacrificing capacity.

More than 500 million hard drives are produced each year, according to industry researcher iSuppli, second only to cell phones for volume and economy of scale for products that feature highly integrated technical features in a complete, contained technology product.

SPA has created an infographic on the impact and breadth of the hard disk drive industry; it is available here. Notes from the panel session at Flash Memory Summit and info on the SPA can be found here.