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AustSTOR Pty Ltd
ABN 94 059 440 407 |
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MAID provides high-speed, on-line archives without the power costs of primary storage or the latency problems of removable media libraries.
MAID (massive array of idle disks) is a storage technology that employs a large group of disk drives in which only those drives in active use are spinning at any given time. This reduces power consumption and prolongs the lives of the drives. A MAID can have hundreds, or even thousands, of individual drives, and offers mass storage at a cost per terabyte roughly equivalent to that of tape. MAID technology is offered as an option to high-volume tape libraries.
A MAID is usually constructed with low-cost Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) drives, which have shorter mean time between failures (MTBF) ratings than more expensive drives. In MAID technology, every drive is periodically tested. If a drive shows signs of failure, data is transferred to other drives. A MAID has far greater storage density than a RAID (redundant array of independent disks) system of equal cost. In addition, the power and cooling requirements of MAID are much lower. Limitations of MAID include lower throughput than conventional disk arrays, longer latency times, less redundancy, and greater physical bulk and mass.
Nexsan's SATABeast is the first storage high performance, high capacity RAID storage system that also offers the energy saving benefits of AutoMAID™ technology. AutoMAID™ (Massive Array of Idle Disks) allows SATABeast to place its disk drives to an idle state to conserve energy yet provide near-instantaneous access to data.
Thanks goes to: SearchStorage.com, howstuffworks.com, technologyinreview.com, usenix.net, supercomp.org, copansys.com, for providing the necessary information to publish this information
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