Hard disk drive

A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive or fixed disk is a data storage device used for storing and retrieving digital information using one or more rigid ("hard") rapidly rotating disks (platters) coated with magnetic material. The platters are paired with magnetic heads arranged on a moving actuator arm, which read and write data to the platter surfaces. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored or retrieved in any order and not only sequentially. HDDs are a type of non-volatile memory, retaining stored data even when powered off.

Introduced by IBM in 1956, HDDs became the dominant secondary storage device for general-purpose computers by the early 1960s. Continuously improved, HDDs have maintained this position into the modern era of servers and personal computers. More than 200 companies have produced HDD units, though most current units are manufactured by Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital. As of 2015, HDD production (exabytes per year) and areal density are growing, although unit shipments are declining.

HGST Deskstar

The Deskstar is the name of a product line of computer hard disk drives. It was originally announced by IBM in October 1994. The line was continued by Hitachi when in 2003 it bought IBM's hard disk drive division and renamed it Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. In 2012 Hitachi sold the division to Western Digital who rebranded it as HGST.

The first Deskstar product produced by IBM was the DALA-3540; the last was the 180GXPHGST continued the product line after the acquisition, selling the Deskstar 120GXP and Deskstar 180GXP under the HGST brand for a short time and selling new models thereafter.

The unreliable IBM Deskstar 75GXP product became notorious as the "Deathstar" (only one of at least twenty IBM products in the Deskstar family)

Products

A list of all Deskstar Models, including those manufactured by both IBM and HGST

IBM models

HGST

HGST, Inc. (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital that sells hard disk drives, solid-state drives, and external storage products and services.

History

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies was founded in 2003 as a merger of the hard disk drive businesses of IBM and Hitachi. Hitachi paid IBM US$2.05 billion for its HDD business.

On March 8, 2012, Western Digital (WD) acquired Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for $3.9 billion in cash and 25 million shares of WD common stock valued at approximately $0.9 billion. The deal resulted in Hitachi, Ltd. owning approximately 10 percent of WD shares outstanding, and reserving the right to designate two individuals to the board of directors of WD. It was agreed that WD would operate with WD Technologies and HGST as wholly owned subsidiaries and they would compete in the marketplace with separate brands and product lines.

In May 2012, WD divested to Toshiba assets that enabled Toshiba to manufacture and sell 3.5-inch hard drives for the desktop and consumer electronics markets to address the requirements of regulatory agencies.

Active Archive

Active Archive is a method of tiered storage which gives the user access to data across a virtualized file system that migrates data between multiple storage systems and media types including solid-state drive/flash, hard disk drives, magnetic tape, optical disk, and cloud. The result of an active archive implementation is that data can be stored on the most appropriate media type for the given retention and restoration requirements of that data. This allows less time sensitive or infrequently accessed data to be stored on less expensive media, and eliminates the need for an administrator to manually migrate data between storage systems. Additionally since storage systems such as tape libraries have very low power consumption, the operational expense of storing data in an active archive is greatly reduced.

Active archives provide organizations with a persistent view of the data in their archives and make it easy to access files whenever needed. Active archives take advantage of metadata in order to keep track of where primary, secondary, and sometimes tertiary copies of data reside within the system, in order to maintain online to near-online accessibility to any given file in a file system, regardless of the storage medium being utilized. The impetus for active archive applications, or the software involved in an active archive, was the growing amount of unstructured data in the typical data center and the need to be able to manage and efficiently store that data. As a result, active archive applications tend to be focused on file systems and unstructured data, rather than all of the collective data; however, many have features and functions that address traditional backup needs as well.